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http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/28/us-secret-service-says-no-to-guns-at-republican-convention/21334706/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160531161847id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2016/03/28/us-secret-service-says-no-to-guns-at-republican-convention/21334706/
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US Secret Service says 'no' to guns at Republican convention
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20160531161847
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The U.S. Secret Service will not allow people to carry guns into the July Republican National Convention in Cleveland, quashing the hopes of more than 45,000 people who have signed a petition saying attendees should be allowed to bring firearms.
The Secret Service said on Monday it has the authority to preclude guns from sites visited by the people it protects such as U.S. presidential candidates, presidents and former presidents.
SEE ALSO: Suspected D.C. gunman once disrupted Congress, proclaimed himself 'prophet'
"Only authorized law enforcement personnel working in conjunction with the Secret Service for a particular event may carry a firearm inside of the protected site," agency spokesman Robert Hoback said in a statement.
"Individuals determined to be carrying firearms will not be allowed past a predetermined outer perimeter checkpoint, regardless of whether they possess a ticket to the event," he said.
Related: Photos of the Secret Service in action
US Secret Service says 'no' to guns at Republican convention
A member of the Secret Service walks the perimeter of the North Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, March 7, 2016, after a person allegedly attempted to jump over the fence. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
A Secret Service uniformed officer patrols the North Lawn of the White House after a lock down at the White House in Washington, Monday, March 7, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
A member of the uniformed Secret Service stands in front of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's plane as he prepares to depart after speaking at a rally at Millington Regional Airport in Millington, Tenn., Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
A member of Secret Service positioned onstage during remarks by President Barack Obama during a panel discussion as part of the White House Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
A Secret Service agent stands guard as a group of construction workers stands on a doorway for a glimpse of Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Friday, Feb. 19, 2016, in Elko, Nev. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
A uniformed U.S. Secret Service police officer stands guard in a knee-deep snow outside the White House in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Secret Service police stand guard outside the White House after a man was caught jumping the fence as President Barack Obama and his family ate Thanksgiving dinner, on Thursday, Nov. 26, 2015, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
A Secret Service Agent stands guard as Vice President Joe Biden, with President Barack Obama and his wife Jill Biden, speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015, to announce he will not run for the presidential nomination. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
A heavily armed US Secret Service officer talks to another officer on the grounds of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary where Pope Francis will stay during his visit Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015, in Wynnewood, Pa. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Members of the Secret Service keep a watchful eye prior to President Barack Obama's departure from Palm Springs, Calif., International Airport aboard Air Force One Sunday, June 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Peña)
Members of the Secret Service Uniform Division moves media from the briefing room and media as parts of the White House are evacuated, Tuesday, June 9, 2015, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
An officer of the US Secret Service Uniform Division patrols Lafayette Park across from the White House in Washington, Tuesday, June 9, 2015. Part of the White House was evacuated amid security concerns. Secret Service officers interrupted a live, televised press briefing with the White House press secretary on Tuesday and evacuated the James S. Brady Briefing Room shortly after 2 p.m. The officers would not say what prompted the evacuation, and the White House had no immediate information about the incident. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Uniformed Secret Service Police officers patrol on bikes near the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 14, 2015, during a lockdown. A federal law enforcement official says a man has been arrested after trying to launch a drone outside the White House fence. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Secret Service snipers protect Air Force One, with President Barack Obama aboard Friday, May 8, 2015, at the Oregon Air National Guard Base in Portland Ore. (AP Photo/Greg Wahl-Stephens)
Secret Service officers search the south grounds of the White House in Washington, Monday, Jan. 26, 2015. A device, possibly an unmanned aerial drone, was found on the White House grounds during the middle of the night while President Barack Obama and the first lady were in India, but his spokesman said Monday that it posed no threat. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
A Secret Service Agent is seen through tinted and patterned glass as he stands in front of the door to a room where President Barack Obama was meeting with leading CEOs to discuss ways to promote the economy and create jobs during his last two years in office, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014, at the Business Roundtable Headquarters in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
** UPDATES THE CHARGES FILED AGAINST DOMINIC ADESANYA ** A Secret Service police officer walks outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014, as a maintenance worker performs fence repairs as part of a previous fence restoration project. Dominic Adesanya, the 23-year-old Maryland man who climbed over the White House fence was ordered held without bond in an appearance Thursday before a federal magistrate judge. He has been charged with unlawfully entering the restricted grounds of the White House and harming two police dogs. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Members of the Secret Service watch as Marine One taxies on the runway before President Barack Obama leaves the Gary/Chicago International Airport in Gary, Ind., Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014. (AP Photo/Paul Beaty)
FILE - In this Sept. 23, 2014 file photo, a U.S. Secret Service K-9 sweeps the sidewalk around the White House facing Pennsylvania Avenue after protests by anti-war activists who blocked the entrance to the northwest gate. Security around the White House perimeter has been intensified since last Friday when a 42-year-old Army veteran climbed over the fence and dashed across the north lawn and entered the executive mansion before being stopped. The US Secret Service and National Park Service have been discussing possible changes to the security infrastructure on roads and parks around the White House. The Secret Service is deciding whether to permanently close the Ellipse and other roadways, which have been closed since 9/11. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2104 file photo uniformed Secret Service officers walk along the lawn on the North side of the White House in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014. The Secret Service is coming under intense scrutiny after a man who hopped the White House fence made it all the way through the front door before being apprehended. The US Secret Service and National Park Service have been discussing possible changes to the security infrastructure on roads and parks around the White House. The Secret Service is deciding whether to permanently close the Ellipse and other roadways, which have been closed since 9/11.(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
A U.S. Secret Service agent stands watch as President Barack Obama lifts off on Marine One helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 28, 2014, as he travels to deliver the commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama and White House counselor John Podesta at the intersection of 18th and C streets NW, accompanied by members of the Secret Service as they head towards the Dept. of Interior, Wednesday, May 21, 2014. Obama and Podesta also walked back to the White House after a signing a proclamation regarding the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Members of the US Secret Service's Counter Assault Team, known in the agency as CAT, are seen before boarding helicopters at a landing zone in Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday, March 24, 2014. The Secret Service sent three agents home from the Netherlands just before Obama's arrival after one agent was found inebriated in an Amsterdam hotel, the Secret Service said Tuesday. The three agents were benched for "disciplinary reasons," said Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan, declining to elaborate. Donovan said the incident was prior to Obama's arrival Monday in the country and did not compromise the president's security in any way.(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
A petition on change.org called for firearms to be allowed into the Quicken Loans Arena during the convention in Ohio, a state that allows guns to be carried openly in public. It had drawn 45,811 supporters by Monday afternoon.
The arena's rules forbid firearms or other weapons, which the petition says is a "direct affront" to the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment right to bear arms. It called Cleveland one of the most dangerous U.S. cities.
SEE ALSO: Mexican official: One of Mexico's most powerful cartels is expanding into territory just across the US border
"With this irresponsible and hypocritical act of selecting a 'gun-free zone' for the convention, the RNC has placed its members, delegates, candidates and all U.S. citizens in grave danger," it said.
The petition called for five actions to enable gun owners to carry their weapons into the venue. One of those recommendations was for Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican presidential candidate, to use his executive authority to override the arena's decision to be a "gun-free zone."
But Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the Kasich campaign, said the Secret Service had made its decision.
SEE ALSO: Bernie Sanders' team just made some eyebrow-raising claims while arguing that he can defeat Hillary Clinton
"At this point the Secret Service has already weighed in and whoever is the force behind this petition probably should have gone to the Secret Service from the get-go," he said.
The Republican convention may be contested if front-runner Donald Trump does not receive enough delegates to clinch his party's nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election.
Trump's rallies have been punctuated by protesters, and sometimes clashes. He has warned there would be "riots" if he is denied the nomination.
More from AOL.com: 25,000 sign petition to allow guns at Republican National Convention Trump holds delegate lead, but Cruz maneuvers to outflank him at convention Hansel and Gretel pack heat in the NRA's reimagined fairy tales
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The Secret Service said on Monday it has the authority to preclude guns from sites visited by the people it protects.
| 96.636364 | 1 | 20.090909 |
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http://time.com/3059918/lois-lerner-republicans/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160531163725id_/http://time.com:80/3059918/lois-lerner-republicans/
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IRS Official Lois Lerner Calls Republicans 'Crazies' and '-holes'
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20160531163725
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Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service official at the center of a scandal involving that agency’s targeting of conservative groups, called Republicans “crazies” and “assholes,” according to emails released Wednesday.
Lerner’s messages were released by House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp as part of an investigation looking into possible criminal wrongdoing at the IRS. The emails released by Camp’s committee were redacted to use the language “—holes,” but a Camp spokesperson confirmed the original emails read “assholes.” Lerner resigned from her post overseeing tax-exempt groups last September.
In work emails exchanged November 2012 with an unidentified person, Lerner knocks the “whacko wing” of the Republican Party and conservative radio shows. Camp said in a statement that he hopes the released emails urge the Justice Department to “aggressively pursue this case” and appoint a special counsel. In May 2013, Lerner acknowledged that the IRS chose groups with “tea party” in their name for additional review in determining their tax-exempt status as social welfare groups.
A spokesman for Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, did not respond to a request for comment.
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House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp released new emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner as part of investigation examining potential criminal wrongdoing
| 9.791667 | 0.875 | 3.041667 |
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http://time.com/3841939/computer-clean/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160531213033id_/http://time.com:80/3841939/computer-clean/
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How to Clean Your Computer
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20160531213033
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From deadlines to the daily grind, there’s never a good time to drop everything and clean your workspace. But if you keep the term “spring cleaning” in mind, at least there’s one good reminder to schedule that downtime.
But don’t stop at sifting through your inbox or pulling old Post-It notes off your wall. Get down and dirty with your computer, wiping it clean from the screen to the system files, to make sure everything runs smooth the rest of the year. Don’t be daunted. Follow these seven steps to get your entire computer squeaky clean.
1. Clean Your Keyboard: If you realized your computer had a virus, you’d likely drop everything and start patching your software immediately. Guess what — your system probably has dozens of nasty bugs, and that’s just on the surface. Using tracer viruses, Charles Gerba, professor of microbiology and environmental sciences at University of Arizona, Tucson, has studied the spread of contaminants through office buildings, hotels, and healthcare facilities, proving bugs can spread from the front door to your space bar in just two hours.
Thankfully, common disinfectants were between 80 and 99% effective at stopping them — so get wiping. And don’t forget to disinfect your mouse, too.
2. Scrub Your Screen: Most of the time you spend staring at your computer’s screen it’s on, so you can’t see all the dirt and grime caked onto the glass. But power that display down, and a petri dish will materialize before your eyes. Touchscreen PCs will be worse than Macs, but everyone who uses a laptop gets a gunky buildup where your keys meet the glass when the computer is closed.
To see clearly again, all you need is a microfiber cloth and some simple cleaning solution, says PC World. Make sure your display is powered off (if it’s your laptop, power the whole machine down), and try wiping with the dry cloth first. If that’s not enough, spritz some cleaner onto the wipe, and give it a gentle polishing. And then when you’re done, hit your touchpad, too — that thing is nasty.
3. Sort Your Desktop: If you’re anything like me, when your desk is a mess, your life follows suit. Likewise, there’s a psychological effect to keeping a disorganized gaggle of files on your computer’s desktop. But if you’re one of those people who claims to know where everything is even when your hard drive looks like an episode of Hoarders, consider this argument for keeping your computer’s desktop folder clean. According to the author (and several commenters), Macs slow down when users keep too many files on the desktop, because OS X automatically catalogs previews of files located there for quick viewing. So either organize your files now, or get slowed down by them later.
4. Delete The Duplicates: Copies, copies of copies, and copied copies of copies are squeezing you out of your computer. If you don’t believe me, consider what happens when you email a PowerPoint presentation back and forth between yourself and a co-worker. First you create the slides on your computer (file #1, in your Documents folder), then you send it to your colleague via email (file #2, in your sent email), and then she sends it back to you (file #3, in your inbox). Hunt down and eliminate these redundancies to make sure your hard drive doesn’t run out of space before it’s too late.
5. Backup Your Files: When was the last time you backed your files up? If it was this time last year, you’re already at risk of losing sensitive data. (And if you can’t answer that question, you’re really in trouble.) Don’t just make a copy of your files, make three. First, make a daily, system-wide backup using Time Machine on Apple computers or File History on Windows PCs. Secondly, set up a cloud backup so you can access your digital valuables in case your daily backup fails. And finally, make an off-site, offline backup using an external drive that’s stored somewhere else, off property. This last one is your in-case-of-earthquake backup. Hopefully you’ll never need any of these copies (especially the last one), but you’ll only find out how valuable they are when you do.
6. Install Your Updates: Many computer users think since their systems work well, there’s no sense in messing them up by installing unnecessary updates. But that’s flawed logic, because it doesn’t take into account all the external forces, from viruses to wear and tear, that will cause your computer to break down. Staying current on updates will not only keep your computer running well today, it will fend off unforeseen problems tomorrow. So, take this spring cleaning opportunity to update your operating system as well as all your software — and to delete old programs that you’re no longer using.
7. Run Your Utilities: Put a coat of polish on your freshly cleaned computer by running the system utilities designed to make it run more efficiently. On Windows, pressing the Disk Cleanup button in your hard drive’s properties window (“general” tab) makes it easy to find and delete stray bits like temporary Internet files and other long-forgotten downloads. Then on the “tools” tab, error checking and defragmenting features keep your disk spinning as good as new. On Macs, the Disk Utility app in the Utilities program will scour your drive looking for and repairing broken permissions. Experts recommend you run that program monthly, but if you start doing it every spring, you’ll be a step ahead of almost everyone else.
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A periodic polish will keep everything from keys to apps running smoothly
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http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/26/crocodile-victim-says-hes-a-bit-sore-after-northern-territory-attack
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160601030433id_/http://www.theguardian.com:80/australia-news/2016/apr/26/crocodile-victim-says-hes-a-bit-sore-after-northern-territory-attack
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Crocodile victim says he’s ‘a bit sore’ after Northern Territory attack
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20160601030433
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A 19-year-old man says he’s “still a bit sore” after he was attacked by a crocodile while sleeping in a tent in Australia’s Northern Territory on Monday.
Peter Rowsell had been camping with family near a creek in the Daly region, about two hours’ drive from Katherine, on the Anzac Day long weekend.
Roswell told the ABC the crocodile came through a hole in his mosquito shelter tent, which was pitched just 15 metres from the water’s edge.
Related: Crocodile attacks camper, dragging him from tent in Northern Territory
“It was about 4.30 in the morning and I was sleeping ... and then I woke up and there was something shaking my foot,” he said. “It was about three or four metres long.”
Rowsell said the crocodile was holding on to his leg but didn’t drag him out of the tent. “It was on my foot for like 10 or 15 seconds but it let go after I whacked it once or twice,” he said.
Rowsell’s sister and her partner – who were sleeping in the back of a ute tray – woke to his yells and drove him to hospital. He was kept in overnight and received treatment for non-life threatening puncture wounds to his right leg. He was also put on an antibiotics drip to counter the bacteria in crocodiles’ mouths.
He was doing well and was expected to go home on Tuesday afternoon, Louise Harwood, the director of medical services at Katherine hospital, told media.
Harwood said Rowsell had puncture wounds to both his feet and that his injuries were consistent with his report that a crocodile had attacked him. “It’s not really possible to say from the marks he has the size of the crocodile,” she added.
A spokeswoman for the NT health department described Rowsell as “very lucky”.
NT residents and visitors are warned to stay away from river systems and water holes, where freshwater and saltwater crocodiles are common. Rowsell doesn’t know which breed of crocodile attacked him.
Campers are recommended to set up at least 50 metres away from the edge of water in crocodile territory.
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Camper Peter Rowsell says the crocodile came through a hole in his tent, which was just 15 metres from the water’s edge
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http://fortune.com/2015/10/21/another-tale-of-theranos-patient-woe/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160601055720id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/10/21/another-tale-of-theranos-patient-woe/
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Another tale of Theranos patient woe
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20160601055720
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On Sunday, former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée wrote about his personal experience using Theranos, the controversial blood-testing startup that has been valued at $9 billion by private investors. Specifically, he claimed that certain test results he received from the company were well out of line with what he had received from Stanford Hospital’s Hematology Lab, and that subsequent efforts to contact Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes were met with silence.
Gassée is not the only person to have this sort of experience.
Fortune recently was contacted by a senior technology executive in Silicon Valley who years ago was diagnosed and treated for thyroid cancer. (We have agreed to keep his identity confidential in the interest of privacy.) Last fall, he had blood drawn by finger stick at a local Walgreens WBA store, which then was sent to Theranos for analysis.
One of the results he received—for something called “free T4,” which helps track thyroid function and disease—was a whopping 308% higher than any of his prior test results since being treated. Theranos marked the result as “high.”
Worried, the executive chose to have the same test done three days later at Stanford Hospital, which produced a result well within his normal range. Fortune has viewed both sets of test results.
The executive says that he called a Theranos customer service number and spoke to someone who took his contact information and promised a call back. It never happened. When the executive shared this lack of reply with his internist, he says the internist was dumbfounded, having had the exact same experience with Theranos.
“I’m very fortunate to have great medical care and have been very diligent in tracking my results over a period of years,” the executive explains. “But what if I was newly-treated, or had an overworked or young doctor who didn’t react by realizing that this result was so far out of line? This isn’t about a startup not doing a grocery delivery properly. It’s about people’s health, people’s lives.”
Theranos does not publish error rates for the free T4 test. It is not clear whether the executive’s blood was analyzed using one of the company’s proprietary Edison machines or with a more conventional machine purchased from a third party, though Holmes said today at an industry conference that all finger-stick tests are analyzed using the company’s own equipment.
A Theranos spokesperson says the company logs and tracks inbound calls from ordering physicians. It is common in the laboratory industry for ordering physicians to request reruns, the spokesperson added, and Theranos performs them. The company is, like its peers, federally regulated to track customer complaints. There are few in number, the spokesperson said.
Founded in 2003, Theranos rose to prominence in recent years for technology that allowed its blood diagnostic tests to be performed with a fraction—as little as 1/1000th—of the blood necessary for a conventional test. A series of Wall Street Journal reports published last week raised serious questions about the validity of the technology. The company has since responded.
Previously: Theranos’ board: Plenty of political connections, little relevant expertise
Subscribe to Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the business of technology.
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Another tale of Theranos getting a test wrong, and refusing to respond to the concerned patient.
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http://fortune.com/2016/01/25/baidu-driverless-vehicle/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160601081814id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/01/25/baidu-driverless-vehicle/
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A New Player Is Entering The Driverless Car Race
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20160601081814
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Baidu bidu is reportedly ramping up efforts to develop its own autonomous vehicle in a bid to compete with other tech giants.
The online search company is talking to city authorities in China, and has designs on launching autonomous cars in 10 Chinese cities within three years, reported Bloomberg. The company also plans to test out their vehicles with a small group of drivers this year in a closed environment, said Wang Jing, senior vice president overseeing Baidu’s driverless vehicle project.
Baidu’s progress puts them in direct competition with the likes of Google goog and Tesla tsla in the race to become the dominant company in a nascent industry. Self-driving vehicles could turn into a $42 billion market by 2025, according to Boston Consulting Group, and automakers like BMW and Audi are also developing their own driverless technology.
Baidu believes its knowledge of China’s road conditions will give them an edge in developing autonomous cars for the Chinese. “Many people who have returned after years of living abroad find they’re not used to driving in China, are afraid of driving in China because conditions are much more chaotic,” Wang told Bloomberg. “If you have a robot that’s trained on U.S. roads, for instance, they’ll struggle to adapt to the way Chinese cross roads. Our robots are trained on Chinese roads.”
In December, Baidu announced their vehicle had completed a fully autonomous test around a 30-kilometer route with different turns and weather conditions. According to Bloomberg, for the past three months, Baidu has been partnering with leading Chinese electric car maker BYD to develop the company’s AutoBrain system, a software package that forms the heart of its autonomous driving ambitions.
The software uses different technologies, such as object recognition and 3D road mapping, to improve the performance of its driverless vehicle.
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The market is getting a lot more competitive.
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http://www.tmz.com/2011/06/14/candy-spelling-house-selling-escrow-petra-ecclestone-150-million-mansion-expensive-formula-one-heiress
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160601122924id_/http://www.tmz.com:80/2011/06/14/candy-spelling-house-selling-escrow-petra-ecclestone-150-million-mansion-expensive-formula-one-heiress
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candy spelling sells l.a. mansion for $85 million to Petra Ecclestone
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20160601122924
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didn't get what she was asking for, but the sale of her L.A. mansion should be enough to tide her over until around 2060.
Sources connected with the sale of the 57,000 square foot, Holmby Hills estate tell TMZ ... 22-year-old
is plunking down $85 million for her new digs. Candy was asking $150 mil, but in the L.A. real estate market that price was a dream.
One of our sources calls it "a fair price," adding Candy will be getting more than $1,000 a square foot -- not a bad deal.
We're told the escrow period is somewhere between 30 and 60 days. Since Petra's dad, Formula One mogul
, is worth $4 billion ... finding the cash shouldn't be a problem.
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Well, Candy Spelling didn't get what she was asking for, but the sale of her L.A. mansion should be enough to tide her over until around 2060.Sources…
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http://fortune.com/2015/08/03/starbucks-ceo-president-hillary-clinton/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160601175043id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/08/03/starbucks-ceo-president-hillary-clinton/
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Starbucks CEO's Friends Want Him To Run Against Hillary
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20160601175043
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Hillary Clinton is still the presumptive favorite to become the Democratic nominee for the U.S. presidency. But high-powered friends of Starbucks’ SBUX CEO Howard Schultz are reportedly eager to anoint him as a challenger to Clinton.
The 62-year-old CEO has been urged by supporters to join the Democratic primary, with friends “thinking the time is right for someone who’s not a political lifer,” according to Maureen Dowd’s latest New York Times column. The idea, Dowd postulates, could “be a tempting proposition” for Schultz, and offers a worthy party back-up to Clinton should something unforeseen happen to her candidacy.
It would mark a shift for Schultz if he does enter the presidential ring. In an interview with Time in February, Schultz was adamant that he would not run for President in 2016: “I don’t think that is a solution. I don’t think it ends well,” he said in the story. He threw a cautious endorsement of Clinton, saying he was content to “see what Hillary does.”
Schultz has long been vocal about the role of government and its failure in addressing the nation’s pressing issues. In 2013, Schultz started a Starbucks-led petition to end the government shutdown, and delivered more than 2 million signatures to the White House in their “Come Together” campaign. While promoting his book For Love of Country, Schultz talked about the lack of leadership from the U.S. government and politicians: “The country is longing for leadership and for truth with a capital T,” he told Dowd in a New York Times story.
It was a message he repeated at Starbuck’s Investor’s Day meeting last December.
“The country is definitely not going in the right direction. There is a significant void of leadership in America and around the world,” he said in one report. “I strongly believe that businesses and business leaders have a significant responsibility to do all we can to bring our people along with us and share our significant success … and not wait for Washington because the void of leadership is getting bigger and bigger.”
If he does run, Schultz will be handed the difficult task of defeating Clinton. In the latest numbers by RCP, around 58% of those polled would choose Clinton as the Democratic nominee for President, three times more than runner-up Bernie Sanders.
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Better latte than never for Schultz.
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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bernie-Sanders-on-the-important-Bay-Area-sports-7953506.php
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160602024200id_/http://www.sfgate.com:80/bayarea/article/Bernie-Sanders-on-the-important-Bay-Area-sports-7953506.php
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Bernie Sanders on the important Bay Area sports questions of the week
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20160602024200
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Photo: Laura Morton, Special To The Chronicle
Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, waves to the crowd while walking the parade route during the annual Memorial Day Ceremony at the San Francisco National Cemetery in the Presidio in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday, May 30, 2016.
Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, waves to the crowd while walking the parade route during the annual Memorial Day Ceremony at the San Francisco
Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, shakes hands while attending the annual Memorial Day Ceremony at the San Francisco National Cemetery in the Presidio in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday, May 30, 2016.
Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, shakes hands while attending the annual Memorial Day Ceremony at the San Francisco National Cemetery in the Presidio
An attendee of the annual Memorial Day Ceremony in the Presidio snaps of selfie with Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, during the event in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday, May 30, 2016.
An attendee of the annual Memorial Day Ceremony in the Presidio snaps of selfie with Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, during the event in San
Senator Bernie Sanders (left) is joined by San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim (right) as he campaigns at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Monday, May 30, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders (left) is joined by San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim (right) as he campaigns at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Monday, May 30, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders (right) is joined by San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim (far left) and Danny Glover (left) as he campaigns at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Monday, May 30, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders (right) is joined by San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim (far left) and Danny Glover (left) as he campaigns at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Monday, May 30, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders right) is joined by San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim (left) and Danny Glover (middle) as he campaigns at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Monday, May 30, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders right) is joined by San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim (left) and Danny Glover (middle) as he campaigns at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Monday, May 30, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders pauses as he campaigns at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Monday, May 30, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders pauses as he campaigns at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Monday, May 30, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Rebecca Peterson (middle) takes a selfie with actor Danny Glover (right) as they wait for Senator Bernie Sanders campaign at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Sunday, May 29, 2016 in Oakland, Calif. At left is Graig A. Brooks from Jaguar Productions.
Rebecca Peterson (middle) takes a selfie with actor Danny Glover (right) as they wait for Senator Bernie Sanders campaign at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Sunday, May 29, 2016 in Oakland, Calif. At left is
A line of supporters wait in line to see Senator Bernie Sanders campaign at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Sunday, May 29, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
A line of supporters wait in line to see Senator Bernie Sanders campaign at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Sunday, May 29, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders stick on tattoos worn at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Sunday, May 29, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders stick on tattoos worn at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Sunday, May 29, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders talks to press before campaigning at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Sunday, May 29, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
Senator Bernie Sanders talks to press before campaigning at Allen Temple Baptist Church on Sunday, May 29, 2016 in Oakland, Calif.
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Right before Senator Bernie Sanders' rally in Oakland Monday, The Chronicle asked him one easy sports question and one hard one.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8914762/Prince-a-Purple-Reign-BBC-Four-preview.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160603044600id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/culture/tvandradio/8914762/Prince-a-Purple-Reign-BBC-Four-preview.html
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Prince: a Purple Reign, BBC Four, preview
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20160603044600
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Many have rated Prince Rogers Nelson, the diminutive musician, as the greatest of his generation. Rhodri Huw’s well-structured film looks at the career of the boy from Minneapolis and how he came to revolutionise black music in the 1980s and beyond. Via albums such as 1999 and Purple Rain through to his explicit lyrics and spectacular stage shows, Prince has rarely lacked ambition or imagination. Huw’s film captures the highs and lows of Prince’s career and also his battle for control of his music. The film Purple Rain follows at 10.00pm.
- Prince: a Purple Reign is on tonight, Friday 25 November, on BBC Four at 9.00pm
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Rhodri Huw's film Prince: a Purple Reign looks back over the career of the eccentric genius.
| 6.2 | 0.7 | 2.4 |
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http://www.aol.com/article/2015/08/04/family-dog-teaches-baby-how-to-crawl/21218065/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160603084753id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2015/08/04/family-dog-teaches-baby-how-to-crawl/21218065/
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Family dog teaches baby how to crawl
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20160603084753
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Before you go, we thought you'd like these...
A five-month-old baby was having trouble embarking on his first crawl -- and when his pet Jack Russell noticed his difficulty, he came to the baby's aid by carefully demonstrating the proper crawling technique.
The excellent teacher graciously provided helpful pointers, as if to say, "Eyes on me, boy!"
Isn't this the cutest thing ever?
Family dog teaches baby how to crawl
I wanna play ... this 8-week-young Beagle puppy said with a waggy tail.
Four puppies in a row
Boxer dog balancing treat on its nose.
Two dogs (Siberian Husky and Pomeranian) cuddling.
The image is of a Boston Terrier puppy and a toddler boy approximately 2-5 years of age with blonde hair. The puppy and the boy are staring at each other.
Cute Puggle Looking at Camera.
Beagle puppy lying in a tiny suitcase
Beagle with ears spread wide
Puppy taking a break (it is tough to be such a young model!)
A Beagle puppy of 12 weeks running on yellow sand with only 2 feet on the ground
A young black labrador retriever puppy carries a freshly picked carrot in his mouth.
German shepherd puppy running through field
American Staffordshire terrier puppy yawns sitting on wooden boards
Golden Retreiver puppy girl running in the front yard through the spring green grass on location for adventure playtime and imagination with sunlight and green trees in the background
A serious black puppy (Pit Bull mix) stares intently at the camera while light from the sun shines behind him.
Cute puppy with a green bandage
Ten week old female Golden retriever puppy lying on grass.
Black and white pit bull puppy.
Puggle puppy looking at the camera with adorable eyes.
Shih Tzu puppy running on the sand.
Akita sleeping on the floor
French bulldog puppy sleeping with teddy bear
Spoiled Yorkiepoo Puppy Sitting in Bed of Toys
Italia, Piedmont, Tortona, Portrait of puppy looking at camera
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A five-month-old baby was having trouble embarking on his first crawl -- and when his pet Jack Ru ell noticed his difficulty, he came to the baby's aid by carefully demon
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http://www.aol.com/article/2013/05/29/dont-trade-stocks-buy-and-hold-Paul-Tudor-Jones/20587423/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160603125511id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2013/05/29/dont-trade-stocks-buy-and-hold-Paul-Tudor-Jones/20587423/?
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Women With Children Shouldn't Trade Stocks (But They're Not the Only Ones)
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20160603125511
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Women with children should not trade stocks ... at least, not according to Paul Tudor Jones.
Last week, the billionaire founder of hedge fund management company Tudor Investment set the Internet rant-o-sphere on fire when a video of him speaking at an investment symposium at the University of Virginia leaked out.
, Jones was heard to have...
Then, in a moment of self-reflection, Jones added: "I've probably said too much and gotten myself in trouble."
Well, yes, Mr. Jones. In all honesty, you probably did get yourself in a bit of hot water with the PC crowd.
But that's OK. Because in the course of "opening mouth, inserting foot," you also opened the way for us to make another important observation: Maybe in the 1970s, when you first started trading stocks, people believed that women with children shouldn't trade stocks. Here in the 21st century, though, it's probably more accurate to say that
should trade stocks. No humans, at least. Emphasis on the word "trade."
These days, a person -- man or woman, childless or parent -- who wants to trade in and out of stocks isn't just competing with his fellow man (etc.). He's competing with professional traders at multinational megafirms, armed with limitless manpower, servers full of historical data to draw upon, and ranks of Bloomberg terminals to crunch the data. Any lone individual who thinks he can compete with all that, and win, is just plain crazy -- and it gets worse.
You also have computers to worry about. Hedge-fund-run, turbocharged supercomputers, loaded with
algorithms that see a stock move and promptly execute 10,000 micro-trades on the Nasdaq at light speed ... all while you're still mousing over to the "buy it now" button.
Trying to beat those odds -- whether you're a young new mom or a rich, middle-aged white guy with no kids and a degree from Wharton -- isn't just egotistical. It's downright suicidal.
So what's the average investor to do when faced with such long odds? Give up, log off, and resign yourself to having your savings earn 0.01 percent interest in a checking account? Hardly. Even if you can't succeed by trading stocks, you can still beat the market bigwigs by investing in stocks for the long-term.
that despite all the manpower, data, and computers at their disposal, the
over both three- and 10-year historical time periods. While the "professionals" are scrabbling for pennies on the NYSE trading floor, focused on their performance minute-to-minute, they're ignoring the bigger picture.
And that's where you have an advantage.
If stock traders have an edge over the small investor in the short term, then over longer periods of time they're as likely as not to give up their short-term gains. Simply by
a basic S&P 500 index fund or ETF -- the SPDR S&P 500 (
), for example -- you can short-circuit the supercomputers' advantages, and outperform the majority of hedge funds.
When you get right down to it, Mr. Jones was more right than even he knew. Women with children shouldn't trade stocks. No one should trade stocks. But we can all do pretty well by
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Last week, billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones made a splash by saying that women shouldn't trade stocks. He's right -- but not for the reasons he thinks.
| 19.5 | 0.852941 | 2.029412 |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/sports/summer-2004-games-greco-roman-wrestling-heavyweight-final-tearful-retiring-image.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160604030947id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2004/08/26/sports/summer-2004-games-greco-roman-wrestling-heavyweight-final-tearful-retiring-image.html
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SUMMER 2004 GAMES -- GRECO-ROMAN WRESTLING: HEAVYWEIGHT FINAL; A Tearful Retiring Image Is Bronzed for Gardner
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20160604030947
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Rulon Gardner knew this moment was coming, win or lose, but he could not prepare for it. When he sat down on the wrestling mat at Ano Liossia Hall on Wednesday night, he could not hold back a flood of tears as he unlaced his shoes.
He left them in the center of the mat, a wrestling tradition that signifies the end of a career, and left his final Olympics with a bronze medal to go with the improbable gold he won four years ago in Sydney.
''That's it,'' Gardner said. ''When you step off the mat for the last time, it's a big deal.''
His gesture came after he defeated Sajad Barzi of Iran, 3-0, in the third-place Greco-Roman heavyweight wrestling match Wednesday night. His march toward another gold was stopped earlier in the day when Georgiy Tsurtsumia of Kazakhstan threw him to the mat in overtime of their semifinal.
After Tsurtsumia's winning move, Gardner stayed on his knees for a moment to absorb the loss, but he walked off minutes later with a good hold on his emotions. After spending his life devoted to a quirky sport with little room for error at this level, Gardner said he could accept the latest twist in his career.
''I have no bad feelings,'' he said. ''I was trying to score a point to win the match, he countered me and beat me. Ninety-nine times out of 100 I'd have scored, but that's the way the sport is.''
Gardner, 33, could hardly turn on the sport that made him a national celebrity four years ago, when his victory over the unbeatable Aleksandr Karelin became one of the most improbable Olympic moments.
But Gardner's return to the Olympics became even more improbable when he nearly died in a snowmobile accident in 2002 that left him stranded in frigid temperatures for 17 hours in the Wyoming wilderness.
The toe he lost to frostbite sits in formaldehyde in a jar next to his bed at home, a constant reminder of how close he came to losing everything, which partly explains why he took his losses so well on Wednesday. The years since Sydney had brought him more heartache as well -- a divorce, a dislocated wrist that threatened his chances of making the team, a roller-coaster ride with the fame that came with his gold medal.
''I came back and won a medal,'' Gardner said. ''Even though it's bronze, I have no regrets because I gave 100 percent in every match.''
The gold medal this time went to Khasan Baroev of Russia, who beat Tsurtsumia in the final match, 4-2.
That victory came under the watchful eye of Karelin, now retired, who observed the competition from the stands without once acknowledging Gardner, the man who ended his career with a loss. Karelin saw a final contested between two men who came up under him in the old Soviet system, and the victor was a fellow Russian.
''I'm sure he's happy,'' Gardner said of Karelin. ''He's been a champion, too, and he wanted to go out on top. He knows how it hurts.''
Gardner, though, was showing no signs of that pain until the final moments Wednesday night. Before he could even untie the first shoe, the tears were streaming down his face.
''How I first put on my shoes as a 5-year-old kid, that's how I took them off as a 33-year-old kid,'' he said.
After he set them in the center of the ring, he bowed to the fans and walked off with one arm draped over each of his two coaches. He walked off to the idea of his new life. He said he planned to move to Utah from his training home in Colorado Springs. With him will be his new wife.
''Today, I'm a wrestler,'' he said. ''Tomorrow, I'm a husband, and hopefully a good one at that.''
The part in between turned out to be the hard part. He could do nothing to ease that moment, except cry.
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Khasan Baroev (Russia) wins men's 120kg greco-roman wrestling at 2004 Olympics; Georgiy Tsurtsumia (Kazakhstan) wins silver and Rulon Gardner (US) wins bronze; at end of match Gardner leaves shoes on mat in symbolic announcement of his retirement from wrestling; photos (M)
| 14.767857 | 0.553571 | 0.875 |
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http://fortune.com/2016/05/10/ackman-opinion-pearson/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160604090853id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/05/10/ackman-opinion-pearson/?
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Investor Bill Ackman on outgoing Valeant CEO Michael Pearson
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20160604090853
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Activist investor Bill Ackman, one of Valeant Pharmaceutical’s major investors, wasn’t very happy with Michael Pearson, it turns out.
A cache of emails released, part of an 818-page document dump provided to a U.S. Senate committee, provided clear insight into Ackman’s opinion on the former Valeant CEO, reported the New York Post. Ackman attacked Pearson on a myriad of issues, including how he spoke on conference calls:
“My only comment on the call is that you sounded a little defensive on the price increase question,” Ackman emailed Pearson. “If you want I would be happy to share thoughts on how you could have answered that a little differently.”
Or his delay in sending out press releases to defend the company:
“Every minute that you wait before sending out a press release, another shareholder capitulates on Valeant and does not come back,” Ackman wrote Pearson in late October.
Valeant VRX has been under attack since late last year, first for its pricing and drug distribution model then for its murky relationship with specialty pharmacy Philidor. It’s also had to restate financial earnings, and faced a government subpoena and special board committee investigation. Valeant’s shares have dropped more than 90% since their Aug. 5 peak.
Ackman’s Pershing Square has taken a hit since Valeant’s stock has dropped, losing billions of dollars. The fund owns about 9% of the company and is its second-largest shareholder. Ackman has continually defended the company and Pearson until very recently, only admitting in early March that if the company’s situation didn’t stabilize that it may be time to bring in new management.
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Things weren't very happy.
| 52.833333 | 0.5 | 0.833333 |
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http://time.com/2896901/teacher-student-texting/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160604163735id_/http://time.com:80/2896901/teacher-student-texting/
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Why Parents Shouldn’t Fear Teacher-Student Texting
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20160604163735
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Updated 8:11 a.m. ET Friday
In case you missed it, a Baltimore dad struck his 15-year-old daughter’s teacher with a baseball bat last week. The teacher’s offense? Texting the daughter in what the father deemed was an inappropriate exchange.
The baseball bat notwithstanding, it’s easy to understand why many parents have a strong reaction to a teacher texting their kid. After all, creepy adults abound, and teens can be vulnerable prey. So, by extension, it’s tempting to want school districts to ban all such communication between teachers and students.
Even relationships that start out as innocent can take a bad turn. Better safe than sorry seems, on its face, the wisest course.
But research suggests it’s not that simple.
While certain safeguards that ensure texting can be monitored should undoubtedly be in place, the easy back-and-forth between teachers and students can create important bonds, especially for young people who are in need of extra help.
“Teachers are the first to spot trouble for kids who are at risk—kids with mental health issues, sexuality issues, problems at home,” says Danah Boyd, whose book, It’s Complicated is an anti-alarmist polemic that examines the social lives of networked teens. “These are kids who need more positive adult relationships, not less.”
Others who’ve looked deeply into the issue—the possible dangers weighed against the likely benefits—have reached the same conclusion. Mica Pollock, an education professor at the University of California, San Diego, found in a study published last year that texting “increased personalized student support by enabling, then strengthening, teacher-student relationships.” Pollock and her co-author, Uche Amaechi, a doctoral candidate at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, spent a year following two teachers who texted with 40 at-risk high school students from Somerville, Mass.
Still, among parents, the most common reaction to teacher-student texting is fear. “I know teachers who are afraid to even give kids a hug because they are afraid to be sued,” Pollock says. “There is a lot of anxiety on all sides about the appropriate way to interact. But there is no teaching without teacher-student bonds, so the question is how do we form those bonds safely and effectively.”
This is a question all schools are facing—not just those with large at-risk student populations—given that texting is the primary way teens communicate.
Many school districts have created guidelines that allow teacher-student texting, but limit exchanges to school-related topics or confine them to group texts that would, for example, allow a coach to tell his team that practice has been cancelled or a teacher to direct a group of students to be prepared to answer a particular prompt during the next day’s English class.
But in their texting pilot, Pollock and Amaechi, along with the teachers and students they followed, came up with ground rules of their own—mostly to foster one-on-one exchanges, respect and to set some limits on encroaching on the teachers’ personal time: “Do not expect a text back before 8 a.m. and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; and no sharing of anyone else’s business.”
They did not, however, set any limits on content, maintaining that the mix of personal and school-related messages were key to forging genuine trust and caring.
Texts were about school “mixed with lighthearted communication about life events and student needs,” Pollock and Amaechi found in their study.
Perhaps most important, the teachers in the texting pilot used technology that allowed them to use non-personal phone numbers and enabled texting over the computer on school accounts—providing both the transparency needed for safety, and the feeling of privacy that texting affords.
Most experts agree that this kind of balance is ideal.
“We should not ban the technology,” says Charol Shakeshaft, a professor at the department of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, who has studied sexual misconduct by teachers for 17 years. “It is here to stay, and it can be useful in education. But we can create guidelines that allow teachers to use it without blurring or crossing any lines. It has to be open and transparent, where everyone knows that it can be monitored.”
Indeed, it is fairly common for schools to insist that teachers and students communicate via email using open school accounts. In part that’s because adults are comfortable with the idea of using multiple email addresses—one for their work life and another for their personal life.
But they have a harder time thinking of texting in the same way—something that needs to change. According to a Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54% between 2006 and 2010. More importantly, the study found that 70% of teens use texting to do “things related to school work.”
“Kids use text the way we use email,” says Amaechi who is working on a dissertation that examines how students and teachers use mobile devices in the classroom for academic purposes and to communicate. “We have built the rules and polices around the technologies that adults use most—and not what kids use.”
“For kids, their phone is the most important thing,” he adds. “The first thing is to accept that as the reality. Kids want to interact not just with each other, but also with adults through texting. If you limit their ability to text, you are limiting their interactions with adults in ways that could be beneficial to them.”
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Never mind those scary headlines, with safeguards in place, texting can foster student learning and success
| 61.777778 | 0.666667 | 1.111111 |
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http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/vanilla-shortage-threatens-ruin-your-summer-ice-cream-plans-n546731
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160604185118id_/http://www.nbcnews.com:80/business/business-news/vanilla-shortage-threatens-ruin-your-summer-ice-cream-plans-n546731?cid=sm_fb
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Vanilla Shortage Threatens to Ruin Your Summer Ice Cream Plans
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20160604185118
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A price surge could be coming to a freezer near you.
Following a poor harvest in Madagascar last year, the cost of vanilla beans has surged, threatening many ice cream manufacturers, according to the Guardian.
The price of vanilla has more than doubled since February for Charlie Thillier, founder and managing director of ice-cream brand Oppo. His company was paying around $40 per liter of the spice. Now it pays more than $85, he told the Guardian.
These soaring prices could impact more than just the ice cream industry. Vanilla is utilized by companies who manufacture soft drinks, perfumes and even medications.
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A price surge could be coming to a freezer near you.Following a poor harvest in Madagascar last year, the cost of vanilla beans has surged.
| 4.206897 | 1 | 13.827586 |
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http://fortune.com/2016/03/02/newspapers-chris-christie-resign/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160605105755id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/03/02/newspapers-chris-christie-resign/
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Six New Jersey Newspapers Want Chris Christie to Resign as Governor
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20160605105755
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Editors at six New Jersey newspapers think it’s about time Chris Christie quits again—this time, as governor.
A joint editorial from six newspapers including the Asbury Park Press, the Cherry Hill Courier-Post, and the Morristown Daily Record called for the New Jersey governor to resign that position on Tuesday, less than a month after he dropped out of the GOP presidential race that had been occupying so much of his time for several months. Editors at the newspapers—all of which are owned by media company Gannett, according to USA Today—argue that Christie has spent much of the past year ignoring his constituents while campaigning outside the state.
“It has been obvious for at least two years that Christie has put personal ambition ahead of the interests of New Jersey citizens,” the editorial reads.
The newspapers’ editors say they are “fed up with Gov. Chris Christie’s arrogance . . . his opportunism . . . his hypocrisy.” They’re also “disgusted” with Christie’s recent endorsement of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump after he spent months “trashing” the former reality TV star on the campaign trail. Christie’s support of Trump has also been criticized by Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, who is a friend of the governor and supported his campaign.
The editorial refers specifically to a recent press conference Christie held earlier this week in which he refused to answer any questions from reporters on topics such as his Trump endorsement, instead rankling the media by insisting on speaking only about his nominee for the State Supreme Court. The editors point out that any wide-open Christie press conferences have been few and far between in recent years and that the N.J. governor “fails to acknowledge the role the Fourth Estate plays in a healthy democracy.”
More than just hurt feelings and journalistic outrage, though, the editorial also attacks Christie for the time he has spent away from his constituents during the current election cycle and the alleged cost of his campaign to the state’s residents: “Was his trip to Texas to endorse Trump and his campaigning on his behalf the following day in Arkansas and Tennessee a harbinger of more out-of-state stumping for him in the future? . . . Will New Jersey continue to be billed for his security and other expenses on these trips? If so, how does he justify that? Last year, he spent 261 full or partial days out of New Jersey.”
The editors call for Christie to resign or, if he refuses to step down, for New Jersey residents to force him out of office with a recall effort.
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The editors wrote they're "fed up."
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http://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/microsoft-vr-virtual-reality-without-making-a-headset/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160605163319id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/amp/news/microsoft-vr-virtual-reality-without-making-a-headset/
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How Microsoft plans to win VR without making a headset
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20160605163319
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Jun 1, 2016 11:40 AM EDT SciTech
By Sean Hollister / CNET
Virtual reality is here, but Microsoft's HoloLens is not.
Microsoft doesn't want to build a traditional VR headset, and it doesn't know when its augmented reality (AR) headgear will be ready for market. Until then, Microsoft has a plan. It will use the combined allure of VR and AR to help sell consumers, developers and VR headset manufacturers on its Windows 10 operating system.
The company announced Wednesday at Computex in Taiwan that Windows Holographic, the special version of Windows that powers its HoloLens headset, won't be special anymore. In the near future, Microsoft will bring all its features to the regular versions of Windows 10 and open up the floodgates for headset manufacturers to build their own headsets for computers using Microsoft's latest OS.
By adding software support for VR and AR to Windows 10, Microsoft hopes to make using a headset with your PC as simple as plugging in a printer, according to the company.
(What's the difference between VR and AR? Click here.)
Microsoft has a grand vision for what could happen once those headsets all play nice with Windows, too. They could let people work together across different time zones as if they were in the same room, no matter which headset any particular person is using.
Watch this new Microsoft video:
Even though one person has an HTC Vive, rather than HoloLens, Microsoft's platform will allow all three people to see one another and their surroundings well enough to collaborate on a project. How? When the HoloLens' sensors scan the room, Microsoft's platform can share that scan with the HTC Vive user as well.
Of course, the scenario only really makes sense if at least one person has a totally-not-ready-for-market $3,000 HoloLens Development Kit -- which brings us to VR.
Even if it takes years for a consumer-ready version of the HoloLens to arrive and the idea of VR and AR collaboration to bear fruit, Microsoft can harness the excitement right away. The company is telling developers that if they build Universal Windows Applications for VR headsets right now, those same applications will work on AR headsets like the HoloLens later.
It's a much better pitch than asking developers to build apps for the HoloLens itself, which may take years to arrive.
"The announcement broadens Windows Holographic from being an interesting but relatively narrow technology, to something which really opens up the opportunities for new usage models and types of applications," said Steve Kleynhans, an analyst at Gartner.
Meanwhile, it allows Microsoft to work its way into the VR market, which researcher IDC estimates will ship 9.6 million units of VR hardware this year, and 64.8 million by 2020.
Though the existing Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets technically plug into Windows PCs, Microsoft doesn't currently benefit as much as you might think. Oculus and Vive developers don't create VR experiences using Microsoft tools, and headset owners don't buy VR software from Microsoft's Windows Store. Facebook (owner of Oculus) and Valve (partner of HTC) have their own storefronts and their own tools, which means they stand to make the money from the VR ecosystem, until or unless someone else comes along.
Microsoft could be that someone, as long as it can convince its partners to rally around Windows instead of Oculus or Valve.
So far, support seems strong: Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI and boutique PC retailers Falcon Northwest, CyberPowerPC and iBuyPower are all committed to Microsoft's idea, according to Microsoft.
Though making headsets might seem risky for those manufacturers right now, it could be a necessity if VR catches on, said Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Patrick Moorhead. "If you step back, a VR, AR, MR [mixed reality] headset is a replacement for a display, keyboard, mouse and pen, so it's a huge risk if they don't."
On the off-chance their traditional businesses get disrupted by headsets, they won't want to be left in the cold.
Check out all the news from Computex 2016 here.
This article originally appeared on CNET.com.
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Microsoft aims to dominate the virtual reality market, despite many questions about its strategy
| 55.466667 | 0.6 | 0.866667 |
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http://time.com/3765674/wild-oats-project-open-marriage/
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What One Woman Learned From a Year of Sexual Freedom
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Robin Rinaldi did what many women dream of but few actually do: she took a year off from her marriage and made an agreement with her husband that they could both sleep with other people for a set period.
Rinaldi’s book, The Wild Oats Project, is a summary of what she learned during the year she spent in an open marriage. The idea came to her when her husband got a vasectomy after a long battle over whether they would have children — she wanted them, he didn’t. Faced with a future without a family, Rinaldi made a decision: “I refuse to go to my grave with no children and only four lovers,” she wrote, “If I can’t have one, I must have the other.”
That’s when she embarked on the Wild Oats Project. Rinaldi and her husband had three rules: no serious relationships, no sex with mutual friends and no sex without condoms. Both broke multiple rules over the course of the year, and it eventually took a toll on their relationship, but Rinaldi says the project wasn’t as much a choice as “a calling.”
“It was unlike me to act that way,” she says. “I had always been a very cautious and somewhat anxious person, I had always played by the rules. It was something instinctual, and something very female driving me to do this. It wasn’t really planned and strategized as much as felt.”
Still, Rinaldi found that, while many of her friends were supportive, some people thought her project was threatening, even terrifying: “The tale of a woman giving up security, even in an above-board way and allowing her husband to do the same thing, giving up all that security in pursuit of passion and adventure, is a scary idea for a lot of people,” she says. “I certainly didn’t write it to intentionally push anyone’s buttons.”
And ultimately, for Rinaldi and her husband, this was their last chance at saving their marriage. “We knew how risky it was, and we might not make it through, but it was really the only choice we had,” she says. “So we both agreed, two consenting adults, to try this first.” Ultimately, she and her husband went their separate ways, but Rinaldi says the project taught her much more than a simple divorce would have.
The biggest thing Rinaldi says she learned from the Wild Oats Project is that she was putting too much pressure on her husband. “Expecting your spouse to provide passion and security and purpose, it’s a lot,” she says. “I was asking too much of that one person… So now, as a result, I don’t look to someone else to kind of unfairly provide all of those things. That’s the biggest thing I learned from it, and I couldn’t have learned it unless I actually went through it.”
She also learned a lot about sex, and about her own body. Rinaldi spent much of the project in new-age sexual workshops and orgasmic meditation classes, so she came away a greater awareness of her sexuality. “The sex was the classroom, but the sex was not the lesson,” she says. “Your body has wisdom, that is very powerful and can kind of show you your path, and you don’t always have to think it through or necessarily act based on other people’s rules.”
Still, Rinaldi wouldn’t necessarily recommend that other women take exactly the same path she did. Instead, she’d advise younger women to “sow your wild oats before you settle down — that’s a no-brainer.”
Read next: Who Needs Marriage? A Changing Institution
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"Sex is the classroom, sex is not the lesson"
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http://fortune.com/2015/12/03/centurylink-cloud-guru-lands-at-ericsson/
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CenturyLink's Cloud Chief Lands at Ericsson
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Jonathan King, who drove much of CenturyLink’s cloud computing strategy for the past three years, is now head of cloud strategy at Ericsson, a huge provider of telcom gear and wireless technology.
Speaking with Fortune on his first day on the new job, King said he was happy to be working again with Jason Hoffman, the founder and former chief technology officer of Joyent, who joined Ericsson ERIC as vice president of corporate strategy two years ago.
“I joined CenturyLink from Joyent where I worked with Jason and am excited to join him again,” he said.
Earlier this week, Fortune reported that King and Jared Wray, another top cloud exec, were leaving CenturyLink CTL in Monroe, Louisiana.
In his new gig, King will direct product strategy, business development and mergers and acquisitions. He’s definitely done it before. At CenturyLink, which started life as a telephone company, he managed the acquisitions of AppFog, Tier 3, and Orchestrate—all key parts of that company’s cloud push.
Ericsson was founded in 1878 by Lars Magnus Ericsson as a telegraph repair shop, which subsequently morphed into a telephone company. Now Ericsson’s gear runs much of the world’s mobile networks. It does business in more than 180 countries, and generates annual revenue of nearly $28 billion.
And, like every other company in the world, Ericsson is navigating a tricky transition to cloud computing, where more workloads run in what are called public clouds—huge arrays of computers, storage, and networking that are rented out to paying customers. More businesses are using these shared resources at Amazon AMZN Web Services or Microsoft MSFT Azure, instead of building more of their own data centers.
Towards that end, Ericsson invested in Apcera, which offers what it calls an enterprise cloud development platform and more recently inked a pact with Cisco Systems CSCO
For more from Barb, follow her on Twitter at @gigabarb, read her coverage at fortune.com/barb-darrow or subscribe via this RSS feed.
And please subscribe to Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the business of technology.
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Jonathan King will run cloud-related product strategy and acquisitions at Ericsson, the Swedish provider of mobile network gear.
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http://fortune.com/2016/05/11/stop-multitasking/
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Why You Need to Stop Multitasking
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MPW Insider is an online community where the biggest names in business and beyond answer timely career and leadership questions. Today’s answer for: What are three skills that are critical to success? is written by Jana Cohen Barbe, partner and global vice chair of Dentons.
For me, it begins and ends with the letter “C”. The three “C’s” that are critical to success are often unrecognized: confidentiality, compartmentalize, and collegiality. Here’s how they’ve helped me succeed throughout my career:
Confidentiality Can you keep a secret? Really keep a secret? Individuals who succeed in business are fundamentally trustworthy. They understand that information is not a commodity to be brokered in the workplace. Information is not a means of bragging, nor a way to convey power or inclusion. The inappropriate sharing of confidential information violates basic standards of conduct, and even more, it undermines morale by creating a toxic milieu fed by gossip and innuendo, where individuals do not feel they are working together for a common goal. Successful people are reliable and veracious. When privy to confidential information without sharing it, they convey respect for their colleagues and loyalty to their business; thus, enhancing their personal credibility.
See also: The One Skill That Will Help You Make Better Business Decisions
Compartmentalize The degree of juggling now expected of successful people is unprecedented and potentially overwhelming. The bombardment of emails, phone calls, memoranda, meetings, social media, and other demands on our time can render high performance professionals paralyzed and incapable of responding. Attempting to multi-task in the face of it all can decrease productivity as we jump from matter to matter completing nothing. The key is not to multi-task, but to compartmentalize and prioritize tasks — to do one thing at a time — and then move on to the next, rather than attempt to address multiple projects at once, insufficiently. Dedicate specific time in the day for specific jobs; responding to emails, returning phone calls, reviewing new data, tackling a new project. Do not respond to emails while sitting on a conference call or reviewing memoranda. Do one thing at a time and complete the task before moving to the next one. Staying focused and limiting internal and external distractions will ultimately save you time, your most valuable commodity.
Collegiality It seems so obvious and yet so often underestimated – people who are likable and collegial in the workplace are more likely to succeed than people who are rude, divisive, or unkind. Think of it this way: Would a manager select someone who is disliked or unlikeable for an intensive project that requires a team to travel together, to spend considerable time together and, most importantly, to form a cohesive group? They wouldn’t. Opportunities go to those who unify, not to those who disrupt. Opportunities do not go to those who are hurtful or mean-spirited. That is not to say that individuals must be agreeable at all times. In the workplace, individuals should voice diverse and contrary opinions, but they should do so respectfully with civility and good humor. Disparate views can be conveyed in a way that is conciliatory and considerate of the views of others and there is no place in a work environment for name-calling, hostility, or vulgarity. The most successful individuals are those who find a way to balance an authentic voice with a diplomatic style that is good natured and genial. Collegiality is the unspoken prerequisite to success.
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It's hurting your productivity.
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http://fortune.com/2016/02/29/microsoft-hololens-games-apps/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160606023034id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/02/29/microsoft-hololens-games-apps/
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Microsoft HoloLens Launch Games, Apps Detailed
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Microsoft begins taking pre-orders for its $3,000 HoloLens Development Edition on Feb. 29 in anticipation for its March 30 launch. As part of its rollout for businesses and developers, the company is providing tutorial videos, documentation, and information to help companies develop Windows 10 apps for the augmented reality system. And part of that help is coming in the form of three playable HoloLens games developed by Microsoft.
Kudo Tsunoda, corporate vice president at Microsoft, announced through a blog post today that Fragments, Young Conker, and RoboRaid (previously demonstrated at E3 as Project X-Ray) will be included with the hardware to showcase the gaming capabilities that augmented reality opens up. Early purchasers of the new hardware will include game developers, and Microsoft MSFT is looking to create an ecosystem of software that will help it sell the consumer version of HoloLens down the line.
Fragments puts gamers in the middle of an augmented reality crime drama that unfolds in their living room. Players are able to investigate clues and solve crimes by interacting with characters that sit on their couch and talk directly to them.
“As a holographic platform highlight, Fragments demonstrates how creators can build characters and storylines that drive a higher level of emotional engagement and attachment than you can with any other medium,” Tsunoda wrote. “Fragments blends the line between the digital world and the real world more than any other experience we built. When your living room has been used as the set for a story, it generates memories for you of what digitally happened in your space like it was real. It is an experience that bridges the uncanny valley of your mind and delivers a new form of storytelling like never before.”
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
Young Conker takes the popular squirrel created by Microsoft-owned developer Rare off platform gaming and and into the real world. Developed by Asobo Studios (which also worked with Microsoft on Fragments), the game changes based on what environment the gamer is playing in.
“This means every person gets a unique gameplay experience, since each gamer’s real world environment is unique,” Tsunoda wrote. “It is amazing how different the play experience feels based on playing the game in your living room versus your kitchen or your bedroom. Even starting the game from a different position in a single room creates an entirely new gameplay dynamic.”
Tsunoda added that this use of real-world environments for gameplay levels shows developers a way to create HoloLens games without needing huge teams. The real world becomes the levels, allowing developers to focus on fun gameplay experiences.
Rounding out the launch games is RoboRaid, which was previously playable at E3 last year as Project X-Ray. I was able to play this game last June, along with Minecraft: HoloLens Edition, and they really got me excited about the potential of augmented reality gaming. RoboRaid is a first-person shooter that has invading aliens literally ripping through the walls of the room you’re in. You use the Clicker to shoot at the waves of alien robots as they fly into the room shooting lasers.
This VR Company Helps Soldiers Cope With War Injuries
RoboRaid uses spatial sound as a gameplay feature, alerting gamers which direction to turn when they hear the wall crumbling. Tsunoda wrote that this game highlights how to use gaze, gesture, and voice input in a fast and frenetic gameplay experience. RoboRaid was created by a team of eight people over the course of 12 weeks at Microsoft.
Several non-gaming apps included with HoloLens will help developers, including HoloStudio, which Tsunoda wrote will allow developers to easily create 3D in 3D—at real-world scale. This app also teaches developers how to use the HoloLens interaction model of gaze, gesture, and voice within games and other applications.
The Development Edition also runs an enhanced version of Skype, which allows people running Skype on any Windows device to interact in the holographic world. Tsunoda wrote that this application shows how holograms can be used for remote collaboration and training in a way previously impossible.
“This type of communication has enormous potential in both the consumer and business world,” Tsunoda wrote. “It will allow developers to communicate with each other using the holographic medium to share development methods and seek the advice of others. With Skype, you can see the holograms the other person is seeing and you can use holograms to illustrate helpful techniques or development approaches. It is our hope that the holographic development community will be just that—a community.”
Check out This New 360-Degree Camera
Rounding out the non-gaming apps is HoloTour, which offers users 360-degree panoramic displays of places like Rome and Machu Picchu. HoloTour allows users to actually walk around locations like Rome’s city streets complete with 3D sound to create the illusion that one’s there.
This summer, Microsoft will release Actiongram for HoloLens. Tsunoda wrote that this holographic storytelling medium for the platform will allow developers to blend holographic content into real world settings, allowing anybody to create emotionally compelling and humorous videos.
“These are videos that previously could only be created using expensive effects packages by people with extensive 3D training,” Tsunoda wrote. “We will be delivering new content for Actiongram regularly so that you can continually express yourself in this holographic medium.”
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Microsoft has Skype, Young Conker, and other experiences.
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http://fortune.com/2016/05/01/japans-economic-ties-thailand/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160606023344id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/05/01/japans-economic-ties-thailand/
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Foreign Minister Reaffirms Japan's Economic Ties to Thailand
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Japan’s foreign minister arrived in Bangkok on Sunday aiming to reaffirm economic ties after Japanese investments in Thailand slumped last year amid political concerns as well as stiff competition emerging from more nimble neighbors.
Japan has historically been the largest investor in Thailand, Southeast Asia’s second biggest economy, which it sees as an important production base.
However, Japanese investments in Thailand nosedived by 81% last year, according to official data, something analysts say mirrors concern about Thailand’s economy which continues to struggle under prolonged military rule.
Increased competition from the region’s newer economies, such as Vietnam and Myanmar, is posing another threat to foreign investment in Thailand.
Japan Quake Rattles Markets as Factories Shut
Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told a news conference after meeting his Thai counterpart at the beginning of a two-day visit that Thailand remained an important stakeholder.
“Thailand is a stakeholder that Japan cannot be without as many big and medium-sized Japanese firms from over 4,500 companies are based here,” Kishida told reporters.
Japan still came top in foreign direct investment (FDI) in Thailand last year, with total investments approved valued at more than 144 billion baht ($4.13 billion).
A senior Japanese diplomat, who wanted to remain anonymous, said Thailand’s military government was keen to allay Japanese fears on potential political obstacles to investment.
Lyft Opens Its Car Doors To Chinese Travelers Who Need a Ride
Thailand has been ruled by a junta since the military took power in a May 2014 coup. The junta has promised a swift return to democracy but has pushed back a general election now expected to place in mid-2017.
The military government, led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, has struggled to revive Thailand’s export-dependent economy.
The country has seen a fresh wave of small, anti-junta protests over the past two weeks ahead of an Aug.7 referendum on a draft constitution that critics say will enshrine military power.
Kishida’s visit to Bangkok kicks off his tour of the region including Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.
It follows his visit to Beijing where China and Japan both expressed willingness to improve strained relations over conflicting territorial claims in the East China Sea.
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Japan's investments in Thailand belay the success of Thailand's junta government.
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http://www.nbc.com/chicago-fire/episode-guide/season-4/sharp-elbows/407
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160606105249id_/http://www.nbc.com:80/chicago-fire/episode-guide/season-4/sharp-elbows/407
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Sharp Elbows | Episodes | Chicago Fire | NBC
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Captain Patterson (Brian White) suspends Severide (Taylor Kinney) from 51 for a day, citing their recent confrontation in the bar. Severide's dad, Benny (guest star Treat Williams), suggests they go after Patterson with both barrels, even going so far as to dig up dirt on Patterson's past. When Severide demurs, Benny takes matters into his own hands - and finds evidence of criminal wrongdoing from Patterson's youth. After much debate, Severide decides to turn over the file of evidence to Patterson. Patterson wants to know what Severide wants... but Severide insists he wants nothing - just the chance to remind Patterson that they're both human and can do the right thing when it's called for.
Meanwhile, the conspiracy case against Boden (Eamonn Walker) takes a turn for the worse. In addition to the faked photos that show his accuser beaten and bruised, Boden's fingerprints were on the victim's wine bottle - which seemingly backs up the woman's story. Boden unintentionally makes matters worse when he looks into the apartment building's security camera. With his suspicions firmly pointed in one direction - at Chief Riddle - he confronts Riddle at a C.F.D. gala, insisting that he'll uncover the truth. In a show of solidarity, all of 51 unites behind Boden at the event.
Cruz (Joe Minoso) continues his quest to get his friend Freddie out of a gang and offers him safe refuge at the firehouse.
Chili (Dora Madison) and Borrelli (Steven R. McQueen) continue their romantic relationship, even risking a little covert PDA within the firehouse.
Borrelli faces a real test of leadership when a momentary lapse in his judgment causes Casey (Jesse Spencer) to be hit by a car during a rescue.
Dawson (Monica Raymund) incurs Patterson's wrath after she accuses him of an alliance with Riddle.
Otis (Yuri Sardarov) asks Brett (Kara Killmer) to the gala, and she accepts.
Voight (Jason Beghe from Chicago P.D.) shows up with a private offer to Boden to help him get to the bottom of the conspiracy.
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The Boden and Patterson feud spills over into 51; Boden investigates the source of the conspiracy. Treat Williams guest stars.
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http://www.people.com/article/anna-kendrick-hot-funny-award-spike-guys-choice-awards
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Anna Kendrick Gets Hot & Funny Award at Spike's Guys Choice Awards : People.com
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20160606123546
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Anna Kendrick and Adam DeVine
06/04/2016 AT 10:50 PM EDT
's jokes and looks are always
It only makes sense, then, that the actress was presented Saturday night with the "Hot & Funny" award at Spike TV's 10th Annual Guys Choice Awards.
Inside the event, Kendrick met up with costar Adam DeVine, who acted as one of the presenters for the evening.
The award is extremely fitting for the
star: Kendrick, 30, has previously been honored as part of PEOPLE's World's Most Beautiful and is responsible for one of the funniest Twitter accounts on the Internet (case in point: that time when she received more than 100,000 reactions from fans while
The Guys Choice Awards taped Saturday night at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California, with a "Rat Pack in Las Vegas" theme.
"Guys Choice is celebrating its own decade of hotness this year," Executive Producer Casey Patterson said in a press release. "We're going full Rat Pack with legends, ladies, laughs and more than a few surprises for our big 10th Manniversary."
The award show will air on Thursday, June 9, at 9 p.m. ET on Spike TV.
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The Pitch Perfect funny lady was honored at the manly awards show, which will air June 9 on Spike
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http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/06/08/06/47/auschwitz-museum-tracks-down-long-lost-inmate-belongings
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160607222113id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/06/08/06/47/auschwitz-museum-tracks-down-long-lost-inmate-belongings
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Auschwitz museum recovers long-lost belongings of Jews murdered at Nazi death camps
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Up to 16,000 long-lost items belonging to Jews murdered at Nazi death camps during World War II have been discovered. (AAP)
The Auschwitz museum has recovered 16,000 long-lost items belonging to Jews murdered at the Nazi death camp, decades after they were stored away and forgotten by Poland's former communist regime.
"In most cases, these are the last personal belongings of the Jews led to death in the gas chambers upon selection at the ramp," the museum said in a statement.
"These include, among others, thermometers, empty bottles of medicine, fragments of shoes, jewellery, cutlery, watches, brushes, tobacco pipes, lighters."
Archaeologists first dug up the items in 1967 from the ruins of what had been a crematorium and gas chamber at the former World War II death camp set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland.
The items were then stored in 48 cardboard boxes in a building at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, only to collect dust for decades until the museum tracked them down after several months of searching.
"I can only try to imagine why the lost objects were deposited in these boxes just after digging up... Presumably, they were supposed to be analysed and studied," museum Piotr Cywinski said in the statement.
But "a few months later, there was a political turnabout in 1968 and the communist authority took a clearly anti-Semitic course," he added.
"Perhaps that is why they did not hurry with the implementation and closure of this project. The times then were difficult for topics related to the Holocaust."
Earlier this month the items arrived back at the museum in the southern Polish city of Oswiecim.
A record 1.72 million people visited the site in 2015, the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by the Soviets.
One million European Jews died there between 1940 and 1945.
More than 100,000 other people including non-Jewish Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and anti-Nazi resistance fighters also died at the camp, according to the museum.
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The Auschwitz museum has announced it has recovered 16,000 long-lost items belonging to Jews murdered at the Nazi death camp, decades after they were stored away and forgotten by Poland's former communist regime.
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http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/08/jimmy-fallon-digs-up-mark-ruffalo-s-1989-clearasil-commercial/21294103/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160608004730id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2016/01/08/jimmy-fallon-digs-up-mark-ruffalo-s-1989-clearasil-commercial/21294103/?
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Jimmy Fallon digs up Mark Ruffalo's 1989 Clearasil commercial (Video)
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20160608004730
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Before you go, we thought you'd like these...
Every actor has to start somewhere, even two-time Oscar nominee Mark Ruffalo.
Jimmy Fallon reminded "Spotlight" star of his humble beginnings as a commercial actor on Thursday's episode of "The Tonight Show," playing for the actor his 1989 TV spot for Clearasil.
Though the actor told Fallon he only "vaguely" remembered doing the commercial, he soon recalled the story of how he got the part.
MORE TO READ: Billy Joel, J.K. Simmons, Jimmy Fallon Belt Out Doo-Wop Version of 'The Longest Time' (Video)
"The director said, 'Yeah, I really, really liked what you did. You just seemed like you came right off the street and you don't know how to act at all,'" Ruffalo said.
"Well that director should watch any of the things you're doing right now," Fallon said.
Read original story Jimmy Fallon Digs Up Mark Ruffalo's 1989 Clearasil Commercial (Video) At TheWrap
RELATED: Jimmy Fallon through the years
Jimmy Fallon digs up Mark Ruffalo's 1989 Clearasil commercial (Video)
THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON -- Episode 0289 -- Pictured: Host Jimmy Fallon during the monologue on July 13, 2015 -- (Photo by: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
Jimmy Fallon signs copies of his new book "Your Baby's First Words Will Be 'Dada'" at a book signing at Harbor Books on Saturday, June 20, 1015, in Sag Harbor, NY. (Photo by Scott Roth/Invision/AP)
Actor Jimmy Fallon arrives at a party in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles after hosting the MTV Movie Awards, Saturday, June 2, 2001. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES: Show hosts actress Kirsten Dunst (L) and her fiance Jimmy Fallon clown around with a prop at the 2001 MTV Movie Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, 02 June 2001. AFP PHOTO/Lucy Nicholson (Photo credit should read LUCY NICHOLSON/AFP/Getty Images)
Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon, writers for "Saturday Night Live," show off their Emmy for outstanding writing for a variety, music or comedy program at the 54th annual Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday, Sept. 22, 2002, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Photo by: Peter Kramer STAR MAX, Inc. - copyright 2003 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Telephone/Fax: (212) 995-1196 2/23/03 Jimmy Fallon at the BMG Post Grammy Party. (NYC) (Star Max via AP Images)
Jimmy Fallon and Mary Louise Parker backstage at the MTV Rock & Comedy Concert at Battery Park in New York City, 5/10/02. The concert was staged as part of the first Tribeca Film Festival. Photo by Frank Micelotta/ImageDirect.
Jimmy Fallon, of "Saturday Night Live," arrives for the MTV Video Music Awards in Miami, Sunday, Aug. 29, 2004. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
Comedian Jimmy Fallon perform at the MTV Tribeca Film Festival Rock and Comedy Concert in Battery Park in New York City. May 10, 2002. Photo by Frank Micelotta/ImageDirect
Jimmy Fallon jokes with and dresses identical to host Carson Daly on TRL at the MTV Studios in New York City. Jimmy will be hosting this years Video Music Awards live from Radio City Music Hall on August 29th. 8/14/02 Photo by Scott Gries/ImageDirect
NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 10: Actors Jimmy Fallon and Maya Rudolph attend attends the Marc Jacobs Fall/Winter 2003 Collection fashion show at the 26th Street Armory during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week February 10, 2003 in New York City. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images)
NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 23: (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER OUT, U.S. TABS OUT) Jimmy Fallon arrives at the BMG Post-Grammy Gala to celebrate the 45th Annual Grammy Awards at Gotham Hall February 23, 2003. (Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images)
HOUSTON - FEBRUARY 1: Actor Jimmy Fallon poses during the MTV TRL Super Bowl edition at Reliant Park in Houston, Texas, February 1, 2004. (Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images)
CULVER CITY, CA - JUNE 5: (U.S. TABLOIDS OUT) (L-R) Actor Jimmy Fallon and actress/singer Queen Latifah laugh backstage at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards at the Sony Pictures Studios on June 5, 2004 in Culver City, California. The 2004 MTV Movie Awards will air on the MTV Network June 10, 2004 9 PM (ET/PT). (Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images)
HOLLYWOOD - DECEMBER 8: Actor Jimmy Fallon arrives at the Warner Bros. premiere of the film 'Ocean's Twelve' at Grauman's Chinese Theatre December 8, 2004 in Hollywood California. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images)
Actors Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon make an appearance on MTV's Total Request Live on April 5, 2005 in New York City. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images)
Producer Nancy Juvonen (L) and actor Jimmy Fallon arrive for the premier of the film 'Music and Lyrics' in Los Angeles, California, 07 February 2007. (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK - JUNE 04: Actor Jimmy Fallon attends Columbia Pictures' screening of 'You Don't Mess With The Zohan' on June 4, 2008 at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City. (Photo by Rob Loud/Getty Images)
TV Personality Jimmy Fallon speaks at a press conference where he was named the new host of NBC's "Late Night" show, when Conan O'Brien takes over the "Tonight Show", on Monday, May 12, 2008. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer)
Comedian Jimmy Fallon and Nancy Juvonen attend the NBC Universal Experience at Rockefeller Center as part of Upfront Week on Monday, May 12, 2008 in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer)
Polster John Zogby ,left, and "Late Night" host Jimmy Fallon react to the crowd during the College of Saint Rose's 86th Annual Commencement at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Saturday, May 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)
Actress Cameron Diaz applauds as comedian Jimmy Fallon delivers his five-word acceptance speech after being honored as Person of the Year at the 13th annual Webby Awards Monday, June 8, 2009 in New York. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)
TV personality Jimmy Fallon attends the NBC Universal's Upfront presentation in New York on Monday, May 17, 2010. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer)
Host Jimmy Fallon and his wife, Nancy Juvonen, arrive for the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday, Aug. 29, 2010, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
Jennifer Westfeldt, left, Jon Hamm, center, and Jimmy Fallon joke around as they arrive at the Kennedy Center for the Mark Twain Prize for Humor award show in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
LOS ANGELES, CA - AUGUST 29: Host Jimmy Fallon speaks onstage at the 62nd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards held at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on August 29, 2010 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 28: TV personality Jimmy Fallon attends the Museum of the Moving Image salute to Alec Baldwin at Cipriani 42nd Street on February 28, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)
Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers arrives at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
President Barack Obama laughs as he tapes an appearance on the "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" at Memorial Hall on the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, N.C., Tuesday April 24, 2012. (AP Photo/The News & Observer, Chuck Liddy)
Jimmy Fallon arrives at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards at the Nokia Theatre on Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
FILE - This Jan. 13, 2013 file photo shows Jay Leno, left, and Jimmy Fallon backstage at the 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif. Leno will be a guest on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," on Friday, Nov. 7. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Jimmy Fallon presents the award for outstanding lead actress in a drama series at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards at Nokia Theatre on Sunday Sept. 22, 2013, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Invision for Academy of Television Arts & Sciences/AP Images)
Justin Timberlake accepts the video vanguard award from Jimmy Fallon, left, at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, Aug. 25, 2013, at the Barclays Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
Jimmy Fallon poses in the press room at the 71st annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 12, 2014, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Jimmy Fallon presents the award for Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards at The Forum on Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, in Inglewood, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON -- Season: 1 -- Pictured: Host Jimmy Fallon -- (Photo by: James White/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON -- Episode 0001 -- Pictured: Host Jimmy Fallon on February 17, 2014 -- (Photo by: Lloyd Bishop/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
Jimmy Fallon, left, and Justin Timberlake arrive at the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special at Rockefeller Plaza on Sunday, Feb. 15, 2015, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 3/27/15 Madame Tussuads and Jimmy Fallon debut five wax figures at Madame Tussauds New York. (NYC)
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Every actor has to start somewhere, even Oscar nominee Mark Ruffalo, who appeared in an acne commercial when he was 22 -- see the hilarious footage!
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Like Father, Like Son: Recipe for a Family Brawl
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20160608053414
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THE word on Brent Redstone, who is suing his billionaire father, Sumner M. Redstone, in an attempt to dissolve the family business, is that he does not have the drive, the stuff, the mojo, that his dad does. Thus Brent's sister, Shari E. Redstone, has been given the nod as the future successor to their father, suzerain of the recently divided CBS Corporation and Viacom Inc.
But in taking on his pugnacious pop all three Redstones are lawyers by training, by the way perhaps Brent is finally showing that he is a Redstone after all.
The particulars of the younger Mr. Redstone's grievances, as outlined in a lawsuit filed last week, are at first blush more lurid than threatening to the family's sprawling media assets, which the Redstones control through their 11 percent equity stake and 71 percent voting interest in Viacom and CBS.
Brent Redstone, who is 55, contends that he has been kicked off Viacom's board, shut out of decisions at National Amusements (the private family holding company that also runs a movie theater chain) and deprived of his fair share of the family's assets. He wants National Amusements dissolved so that he can take his one-sixth share of a fortune valued at $8 billion and go his way.
His 82-year-old father, needless to say, is embarrassed by the public airing of laundry and allegations of self-dealing that his son has leveled. But, equally needless to say, he is not one to roll over easily. What makes Brent Redstone's lawsuit so fascinatingly meta seeking the split of a company that has just split is that he surely knows better than anyone with whom he is dealing.
The Redstone follies and their Shakespearean subplots, of course, are nothing too unusual for media dynasties with graying patriarchs. The antics follow a series of similar intrigues that might lead you to believe that the era of the family media dynasty is under pressure, maybe even on the wane. A closer look at the field indicates that, actually, the opposite is true, especially if you look at both the privately held and publicly traded media groups.
Hurt feelings and all-out feuding are a natural consequence of the generational transition of leadership occurring across the media industry, resulting from the proliferation and consolidation of media businesses in the latter part of the 20th century.
Last year, Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert's elder son and potential successor (sort of), quit his executive role at the family-controlled News Corporation amid frustration that his father was undermining him.
It turned out that Lachlan and his three siblings from Mr. Murdoch's first two marriages were also having a tense time with their dad over his desire to give an equal share of the family trust to his children from his third marriage.
At Cablevision, which owns a lucrative cable television operation, some cable channels and New York City sports interests, tensions have emerged between the founder, Charles F. Dolan, and his son, James, whom he had made the company's chief executive. Investors and analysts have been scratching their heads over a series of strategy flip-flops: aborting a satellite venture, for instance, calling off plans to take the company's cable systems private and embracing a separate plan to pay out a special dividend.
What these three examples have in common, of course, are various degrees of nepotism, dysfunction and a mandatory retirement age (for media moguls) of never. Then there is the whole father-son dynamic, but that's another story.
(By the way, it's hard to talk about familial dysfunction gone wild without mentioning the collapse of the Adelphia Communications cable empire and the resulting prison terms for the founder, John Rigas, and his son Timothy although what went on there was so scandalous that it belongs in a separate category, the one with WorldCom and Enron.)
John L. Ward, professor of family enterprises at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, says that only about half of all family-led businesses make it to a next generation of ownership. But he added that he believed the rate of succession was higher among media companies, in part because the business is glamorous or is seen as performing a public service. "In terms of family members, it's very easy for them to be attracted to the company," he said. "It's not like making widgets."
He also said that media dynasties, unlike other family businesses, tend to be more comfortable with sharing bad news and fielding criticism because that, after all, is their business.
In the case of businesses in which the family does not own clear control, the laws of entropy can come into play. That's what seems to be happening at Knight-Ridder, where the chief executive, Anthony P. Ridder, a great-grandson of one of the company's founders, is under pressure from outside shareholders to sell the company. Mr. Ridder controls only 1.9 percent of the company's votes, in contrast to top executives at the Washington Post Company, the McClatchy Company, The New York Times Company and the Belo Corporation, all of whom are descendants of founders whose position is secured against outside agitators via a controlling family trust.
Clearly, though, there is no one-size-fits-all model for the multigenerational media dynasty. Some are publicly held, some private; some have professional managers, others chip-off-the-old-block leaders. A tipping point for the sale of several family-owned newspaper groups came in the 1980's, when some descendants who no longer had close ties to the business wanted to cash in their stock perhaps most famously the Bingham family, which owned newspapers, TV and radio stations and much else in Louisville, Ky.
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The antics of family media dynasties might lead you to believe that the era is under pressure, maybe even on the wane. But a closer look reveals that the opposite is true.
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http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/06/07/10/40/hillary-clinton-secures-delegates-needed-to-clinch-us-democratic-nom
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AP projects Hillary Clinton has secured enough delegates to win Democratic presidential nomination
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20160608064121
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Hillary Clinton has received commitments from enough delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a count Monday by the Associated Press, assuring she will be the first female nominee of a major US political party.
The former secretary of state reportedly reached the key number one day before six US states, including California where Clinton is campaigning heavily, hold Democratic primaries, and eight years after she came up short in her nomination battle against Barack Obama.
"This is an important milestone, but there are six states that are voting Tuesday, with millions of people heading to the polls, and Hillary Clinton is working to earn every vote," campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement.
"We look forward to Tuesday night, when Hillary Clinton will clinch not only a win in the popular vote, but also the majority of pledged delegates."
You can get breaking news alerts on your phone by downloading our app, 9NEWS Alerts, available on iPhone and Android.
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Hillary Clinton has secured the number of delegates needed to become the presumptive Democratic nominee for US president, the Associated Press has projected.
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http://time.com/3938179/gay-marriage-birthdays/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160608065524id_/http://time.com:80/3938179/gay-marriage-birthdays/
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Birthday Present for Many
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20160608065524
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Gay Americans who were already celebrating their birthday this Friday got an extra surprise: the constitutional right to same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
Monet Sutton, who celebrated her 24th birthday on Friday, was driving into Washington for some red velvet cupcakes with her cousin when she heard the news. “Words can’t describe how I feel right now,” she told TIME over the phone. “I literally just stopped crying. I may start crying again!”
Sutton, who works for a radio station in Virginia Beach, married her wife Kayla just three weeks ago, less than a year after Virginia legally recognized same-sex marriage in October 2014.
“I grew up feeling like my government wasn’t on my side,” Sutton said of the landmark national ruling. “With this decision I feel like they are finally seeing me and my wife as people. We can move to any state and our marriage will be acknowledged as being just as legitimate as any other.”
Jesse Stommel, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was more or less bedridden with a broken ankle on his 39th birthday on Friday. Still, Stommel was thrilled by the Supreme Court decision.
“Twenty years ago I don’t think I could have imagined that this would happen in my lifetime,” said Stommel, who married his partner of eight years on June 13, 2014, in the final hour of a week-long stretch in which gay marriage was legal in the state of Wisconsin.
“On that Thursday night, I said to my partner, ‘What are you doing tomorrow? Want to get married?’” Stommel recalled. The couple married in an impromptu ceremony the following day at noon—which Stommel, who says he’s usually pretty private on Twitter, live tweeted.
“Some things need to be public,” Stommel told TIME. “This was something we needed to loudly proclaim.”
Stommel and Sutton weren’t alone in their double celebrations on Friday. Here’s what other Americans had to say about the gay marriage ruling falling on their birthdays:
June 26 (aka my birthday) has twice provided SCOTUS rulings in favour of gay rights: 2013 struck down DoMA, and today.
— Lucas Willett (@ltw_) June 26, 2015
Thank you to SCOTUS for making my 30th birthday special for everybody in my community. I feel so happy I could cry. PS HOT AIR BALLOON YAY!
— Holly Gaiman (@hollyherself) June 26, 2015
I bought myself a rainbow bandana for my birthday, and I REALLY want to wear it in celebration of today. C'mon #scotus
— Walter DeLong (@walterdelong) June 26, 2015
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Thanks for the birthday present, SCOTUS
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http://time.com/3182658/world-war-ii-map/
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75th Anniversary
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The declarations had not yet come, but on Aug. 28, 1939, Europe already knew war was on its way. On that day, 75 years ago, the armies that would fight what became World War II had gathered.
Just how many soldiers that meant differed by nation, as TIME pointed out to its readers with the map below, which ran in the Sept. 4, 1939 issue. The annotated chart also provides evidence that, no matter how many men were under arms, there was no way for the continent to be entirely ready for what was to follow. In Poland, for example, President Ignacy Moscicki was said to have told Roosevelt that he was willing to negotiate with Germany. By the time Sept. 4 came around — the magazine arrived on stands before then— that willingness had already proved pointless.
On desktop, roll over the map to get a closer look. If you’re reading on a mobile device, click to zoom. TIME
Stay tuned next week for further coverage of the 75th anniversary of the beginning of World War II.
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A portrait of a world days away from combustion
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http://fortune.com/2016/05/05/venture-capital-health-care/
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The Trends VCs Should Be Watching in Health Care
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20160609032545
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This is the first part of VC to VC, a monthly series that features conversations between veteran venture capitalist Phil Wickham and other leaders in the investment world. Wickham is also CEO of Kauffman Fellows.
Bryan Roberts has built a career on picking winners in the health–care industry. The seasoned venture capitalist and partner at Venrock has invested in startups across almost all health–care categories. In the past few years alone, he’s lead several billion-dollar exits.
On a more personal note, I’ve known Bryan for 20 years. He’s the rare individual who combines deep core-subject expertise with a supercharged imagination, an almost radical sense of self-confidence, and a loyal dedication to his entrepreneurs and their ideas.
I spoke with Roberts about the trends VCs should be watching in health care. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How is the health–care industry evolving?
Over the last five years two or three stones have been thrown down a gravel slope, and they’re just beginning to carry momentum and create big opportunities. Things like changes in doctor’s payment methods, which get them out of a volume game and into an outcomes game.
Other pebbles include the wiring of doctor’s medical offices, the advent of smartphones and a whole new generation of participants in the health-care system that grew up using technology—unlike my dad who was like “This is it—paper and pen.”
I think there will be a metaphorical avalanche from those, and it’ll happen over the next decade.
Related: This Is What Makes a Great Boss
Can you elaborate on the changes in financial incentives?
The people paying for health care are getting more involved in trying to create more of a marketplace dynamic, which puts more financial responsibility on consumers. And you’ve got people no longer just abdicating intellectual responsibility [for their health care] to insurance companies.
A decade ago, when you got your first job, you worked at a big company and toward the end of the year, they picked four or five health plans for you to choose between. And there were various cost plans. Those plans had specific, “out of your paycheck” costs and choices. Period.
But that benefits person didn’t do anything other than tell United Healthcare, or Aetna, or Blue Cross, “Okay, give me those options,” and that’s it. And the company paid for most of it. So no matter where you went, it was a $20 copay.
If you fast forward to today, you have these big companies actually insourcing more of the intellectual responsibilities, which is why you have all these companies now going and pitching employers. Employers want to understand where they’re spending money, where they can spend less while getting better care, and how they can motivate people to do this and not that.
And they’re outsourcing more the of the financial responsibility to you. You pay 30 percent of the bill to make you care about getting your MRI done not at the hospital, but at the imaging center down the street where it’s one-third the cost.
It reminds me of back in the day, when you had multiple, big telecom and software providers that all wanted to control consumers’ TV boxes. Now, you have multiple, big health insurers competing for control over…what, exactly?
Everybody wants to be the platform that controls the information and the patient flow—because that is how the money will flow. And so they’re going to fight over this.
Related: What the Most Successful Entrepreneurs Get Right About Angel Investors
Who do you think wins?
That’s the huge question. The benefits consultants just consult, so they could win, but they don’t. The insurance companies have no brand equity—no one wants to be even more in bed with their insurance company. Then you have various other people that sell into HR that are trying to integrate health care into their various stuff. I don’t know. That’s going to be a fun one. We’ll see.
What are the biggest challenges in health care that you’d like to see entrepreneurs address?
There’s a simple one: How do we get health care out of a short-term time horizon mentality? Because here’s the hitch: The people who pay for the vast majority of health care don’t have any economic incentive to care about anything that takes more than three or four years to pan out. It’s why preventive care is what it is.
So the system today is more about ‘sickness care’ than health care?
That’s right. Insurance companies keep customers for, on average, about 18 months, maybe 24 tops. Which means there is preventive care, like for pre-diabetics—really intensively helping that person not get diabetes—but [the insurance companies] are like, “Why the heck would I do that?” since benefits will accrue to the next guy, to a competitor.
That’s the time horizon on ROI for anyone in the health-care system. It’s short. So how you get out of that box—it’s the only thing that will get us from this kind of sick, disease-reactive approach, to something proactive.
What are some other big questions you’d like to see answered?
One is what really gets individuals to engage in health care. What gets each of us to change our workflow, change our behavior? I would argue it’s repetitiveness. I’ll give you an example. Every time a new iOS comes out, I frigging hate it. It’s different, it’s terrible. But like four hours later, it’s the new normal, because I had to push through it or I was screwed.
In health care, the periodicity in which you use the health-care system—and you’re not in a discovery mode when you’re using it, because you’re scared—hampers that adoption of a new normal.
The other question is, in a world where you’re not fee-for-service anymore but you have this value-based care…Who is the entity at risk? Health care is delivered by teams. You can’t have 12 people at risk. One entity has to be at risk for the outcome, and everyone else is still going to be a wage laborer. Who ends up being the business owner in health care that goes at risk, versus the subcontractors who get paid an hourly wage? I think that’s a fascinating question.
What is the most amazing change you predict will happen in the next 10 years?
I think there will be half as many hospital beds in the U.S. in 10 to 20 years as there are today. Because people will be healthier and because we’re so overbuilt. We’re going to change the economics of the system. Today hospitals are like airlines — they just want to put bodies in seats. The whole system is geared toward that. If you change that around, then you’ve reversed the pressure on the whole system.
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Venrock’s Bryan Roberts on why investors should pay attention to trends in health care.
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http://fortune.com/2016/05/02/digiday-media/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160609040616id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/05/02/digiday-media/?
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Digiday Shows There Is Money in Digital Media if You Stay Focused
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20160609040616
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You might not have heard of an online publication called Digiday—unless you spend all of your time reading about the media industry, and specifically the marketing side of the digital media industry, in which case you probably read it all the time. It’s like a trade magazine for online media, and founder Nick Friese says that focus has allowed the company to grow rapidly without ever taking outside funding.
On Monday, Digiday announced the launch of a new publication called Glossy, which will focus on the business of fashion. It’s an attempt to take the success it has had in media and apply it to a different topic vertical, Friese said in an interview before the launch.
“My original vision with Digiday was always to have a business with a variety of different titles, each covering how digital was changing that industry or area,” the Digiday founder said, recalling how the company began in 2008, in the middle of the U.S. recession. “I started with media because that was the industry I was in myself at the time, but the idea was always to branch out and add more categories.”
Fashion may seem a long way away from the media and marketing industries, but Friese said the company plans to take the same approach to Glossy as it took with Digiday—which is to rely on a staff that is passionate about the industry, and then build on that and add other things that can drive revenue, such as conferences and other events.
Digiday, for example, has held more than 250 events since it started in 2008, and plans to host more than 25 this year alone. They aren’t all large-scale conferences, however. Friese said they range from large shows to smaller events aimed at a specific group within the industry, as well as sponsored award programs. Some are done with a local partner who produces much of the content, such as the events it does in Japan.
Sign up for Data Sheet, Fortune‘s technology newsletter.
The company has about 60 employees in offices in New York, London and Tokyo. Friese won’t say exactly how much Digiday makes in terms of profit or sales, except to say that “revenue is well into eight figures, and profit is well into seven figures.” Revenue has grown by anwyhere from 30% to 50% every year, Friese said, and other than a small angel investment in the early days of the company, it has never taken outside funding.
Editor-in-chief Brian Morrissey, who has been with Digiday ever since he moved over from Adweek magazine in 2011, said that not having outside investors the way other online media companies such as BuzzFeed do has been a blessing.
“Not having venture capital has kept us from focusing on things that don’t build the business,” Morrissey said. “I think you’re seeing that with video, where some sites are doing it because that’s what Facebook wants—and they’re doing it not because their audiences are craving live video, but because they have to reach this unrealistic number that’s been set by their venture capitalists.”
As media companies like BuzzFeed and Vice Media continue to try and become as large as possible, some media executives are warning that the race for scale may be a mirage (Digiday gets a relatively paltry 2 million unique visitors a month, but says it is happy with that number). Bloomberg Media head Justin Smith said he believes more media companies will start to realize the benefits of targeting a specific market.
Focus is something media entrepreneur Rafat Ali, founder of the travel site Skift, has also been preaching for some time. He helped start the Verticals Collective, which focuses on smaller media businesses that target a specific niche, such as Digiday does.
Netflix stock is still falling. Watch:
In addition to advertising on the Digiday site—which generates about half the company’s revenue—and running events, Friese said the company has also built a digital-advertising agency or studio in house that creates ads for a variety of marketers both on and off the site, including clients such as Nissan. The Digiday founder said the studio will likely be spun off as a separate business later this year.
The company is also moving into a new area—namely, subscriptions. Digiday just introduced a new magazine called Pulse, which will be published quarterly as a PDF and a print magazine. Friese said the magazine will offer subscribers “unique insights, including weekly calls with our editors, special reports and custom events.”
Morrissey said that Digiday’s initial approach has not changed: It tries to serve its community of readers in as many different ways as it possibly can. And any financial success the company has had so far stems from that, he said.
“We’re seeing conversation starting to shift from how you amass huge audiences through social and digital, vs. how do you amass the right audiences, and then go deep and serve them,” said Morrissey. “Digiday was able to put itself at the center of an industry going through a lot of changes.” The lesson, he said, is that “if you make yourself indispensable to a community, you can build a sustainable media business.”
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Digital publisher says revenue will grow by 50% this year, and it has never taken outside funding.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/04/science/science-watch-survey-cites-sexual-attraction-in-therapy.html
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SCIENCE WATCH - SURVEY CITES SEXUAL ATTRACTION IN THERAPY - NYTimes.com
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20160609064240
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ALMOST 90 percent of psychotherapists say they have been sexually attracted to their clients at least once, according to a recent national survey.
Although less than 10 percent of the therapists surveyed said they had ever acted on the attraction in any way, about two-thirds of those surveyed said they felt guilty, anxious or confused about the attraction, and half said that nowhere in their training had they received any guidance on the matter.
The survey, reported in the February issue of The American Psychologist, is based on responses 575 psychotherapists made to a survey by Kenneth Pope, a psychologist in Los Angeles, and Patricia Keith-Spiegel and Barbara Tabachnick, both at California State University at Northridge.
Contrary to commonly held views that such attraction is exclusively between male therapists and their female clients, the study found that three-quarters of female therapists felt such attractions and that they were more likely than the male therapists to feel a sexual attraction toward clients of the same sex.
Seven percent of the therapists reported being sexually intimate with a client. Of these, male therapists were about four times as likely as female therapists to have done so, the report said. The vast majority of therapists, according to the article, ''reported they had never seriously considered actual sexual involvement.''
The report's authors observe that ethical standards prohibiting sexual relations between a physician and a patient date to Hippocrates and that psychotherapists from Freud on have warned that such relationships would undermine the therapeutic alliance.
Even if there is no overt acting out of sexual feelings by the therapist, the report said, the therapist's guilt about those feelings could interfere with the relaxed dialogue between therapist and client.
While psychoanalytic training deals with the emotional feelings, including sexual attraction, that a therapist can feel toward a patient, only a minority of therapists go through such training.
Sexual feelings for clients arise in the ordinary conduct of psychotherapy and are not necessarily harmful, the researchers contend.
''To be successful, a training approach must first of all acknowledge the value of honest, serious discussions about therapists' attraction to clients,'' the report said. ''Therapists and therapists in training must be acknowledged as fully human, as capable of feeling attraction to those to whom they provide professional services. The taboo must be lifted.'' Dinosaur Winter
For several years, scientists have debated the hypothesis that the demise of the dinosaurs might prefigure the fate of the human race if we should ever be subjected to a ''nuclear winter.''
New evidence disclosed by a team of American and Canadian scientists suggests that, if any climate change resembling a nuclear winter occurred at the time the dinosaurs died out, the cold weather could have persisted only a few months before returning to normal.
Geologists of the United States Geological Survey, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Museums of Canada based their report in Science on their study of fossilized plant spores in Saskatchewan, at a site where rock strata are accessible both above and below the thin layer of sediment on the earth's surface at the time the dinosaurs disappeared. They found that ancient palms and screw pines, both presumed to have been highly vulnerable to cold weather, survived whatever it was that killed the dinosaurs.
Some geologists contend that the extinctions 65 million years ago resulted from the impact of a large meteorite or comet. The latter supposedly threw up a worldwide dust cloud that blocked sunlight, interfered with photosynthesis and chilled the climate. Others argue that the extinctions probably resulted from many complex environmental factors.
In their paper, Dr. D. J. Nichols of the Geological Survey and his colleagues take no position as to the nature of the Cretaceous extinction event. But they note that the plants that survived are similar to plants living today in the tropics of Southeast Asia. If the Cretaceous climate really was altered by a dust cloud caused by a meteorite of volcanoes, the change was apparently too brief to kill these tropical plants.
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ALMOST 90 percent of psychotherapists say they have been sexually attracted to their clients at least once, according to a recent national survey. Although less than 10 percent of the therapists surveyed said they had ever acted on the attraction in any way, about two-thirds of those surveyed said they felt guilty, anxious or confused about the attraction, and half said that nowhere in their training had they received any guidance on the matter. The survey, reported in the February issue of The American Psychologist, is based on responses 575 psychotherapists made to a survey by Kenneth Pope, a psychologist in Los Angeles, and Patricia Keith-Spiegel and Barbara Tabachnick, both at California State University at Northridge. Contrary to commonly held views that such attraction is exclusively between male therapists and their female clients, the study found that three-quarters of female therapists felt such attractions and that they were more likely than the male therapists to feel a sexual attraction toward clients of the same sex.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/bling-crazy-rich-asians-eyes-singapore-high-life-article-1.1371886
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160609175828id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/entertainment/music-arts/bling-crazy-rich-asians-eyes-singapore-high-life-article-1.1371886
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Bling it on: 'Crazy Rich Asians' eyes Singapore high life
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20160609175828
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If you had it, would you flaunt it?
That’s the question at the heart of “Crazy Rich Asians,” Kevin Kwan’s new novel about ways and woes of the wealthy in Singapore, where the nouveau riche and the moneyed old guard are opposites when it comes to opulence.
The island republic has the highest concentration of millionaires anywhere on the globe. It’s the kind of place where everyone shows up for a party in their private jet.
Much of the wealth is new money, and those who have it like to show it off. Vuitton this, Prada that. Closets stuffed with Burberry, the dresser spilling with Hermès scarves.
“They like to spend money and they like to be seen spending it,” says Kwan.
Then there’s the old money, the dynastic fortunes made by what are known as the Overseas Chinese — families that built incredible wealth through as many as 30 generations. They dress drab and hide their gems.
“They spend their money covertly. They are never ostentatious,” says Kwan.
“One woman I know will show up at major events dressed like a stodgy librarian, wearing some trinket like a wooden African necklace. Meanwhile, she has this simply unbelievable collection of diamonds and Chinese jade.”
“Crazy Rich Asians” is both a deliciously satiric read and a Fodor’s of sorts to the world of Singapore’s fabulously monied, both new and old.
A wedding reception is held in an immense crystal palace specially constructed for the occasion in a tropical rain forest. Cirque du Soleil acrobats sprayed in gold hang suspended from the ceilings on ropes. The fireworks are more spectacular than those for the Beijing Olympics and are by the same designer. A guest who speculates that the event must cost at least $40 million is told that’s ridiculously low.
“I’ve attended a few over-the-top weddings like that in my time,” says Kwan. “The novel is satire, but much of what I write about I’ve witnessed on my visits home.”
Recently, the West Village writer accompanied relatives on a three-day, nonstop buying extravaganza to Shenzhen, a shopping city in China bordering Hong Kong. Think Woodbury Commons, but with a population of 10 million. What could politely be termed as “overruns” by the many European luxury brands manufactured in China show up there as high-end counterfeits, also known as “real fakes.”
But you have to know precisely where to go.
“You go through one building and out the back door into another that looks like it’s under construction. You have to turn off your cell phones and go through these steel doors, and suddenly you’re in this huge luxury department store,” says Kwan.
“It’s floor-to-ceiling designer goods. The party I was with spent tens of thousands of dollars. But what they bought was worth hundreds of thousands.”
In the novel, an American-born Chinese woman, Rachel, flies home with her boyfriend, Nick, unaware he’s the scion of one of Singapore’s richest, and most reclusive, families. Nick’s grandmother lives in a hidden palatial estate crammed with museum-quality pieces on view only to an elite network assembled in a tradition known as Guanxi.
“It refers to the Chinese custom of cultivating an intricate web of beneficial relationships based on social connections,” says Kwan. “In Singapore, there may be 50 old-money families, but you wouldn’t know them to look at them.
“You never reveal the extent of your wealth to either your friends or your enemies.”
The wife of a multimillionaire may spread her magnificent collection of jewels on a bedspread for friends to appraise on an intimate evening, but she’ll fly commercial (possibly coach) to shop Paris couture. The families of distinguished social lineage form an impenetrable social circle, leaving it to the newly minted rich of mainland China to put their money on decadent display.
For instance, old money would never embarrass itself by carrying anything with the vulgar Louis Vuitton stamp. Instead, they silently judge the just-got-rich mainland Chinese who line up at the door of luxury boutiques.
“There is such pent-up demand. Such huge money has been made in China — it can be hundreds of millions in a year — and there’s a need to validate it by showing what they can buy and how much of it,” says Kwan. “Then putting it on show.”
Rachel is invited by a new-money girl clique to fly by private jet to a party on a private island where the weekend kicks off with an invitation to shop for free in the resort’s exclusive boutique. Nick, meanwhile, is enjoying a similar boys-only weekend of excess and debauchery with “Beijing princelings and Taiwanese trust-fund brats.”
The spending is obscene — and grounded in reality, the author says.
“I’d gladly tell you what I’ve witnessed, except I want the invitations to keep coming,” laughs Kwan.
“As they say, ‘What happens in Macau, stays in Macau.’ ”
Kwan was raised in Singapore until his family moved to Houston when he was 12. His father was an engineer, but he’ll reluctantly admit to a certain social lineage.
“There were nannies and servants and all that,” he says. “I am hesitant to talk about this, precisely because I come from the sort of old established Singapore family that would think the mere idea of ‘first 50 families’ is hopelessly tacky.”
Kwan has fashioned a high-profile career as a creative consultant on projects including the books “Oprah” and “Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair with Jewels.”
He returns to Singapore frequently and makes a point of capturing the literal flavors of the city-state. Singaporeans are obsessed with food and will argue the relatives merits of a satay from a five-star restaurant in London to a hole in a wall in Sydney, Australia.
“It may be the only city in the world where a street vendor will work his stall in the open air all day and then jump in his Jaguar to drive home to a luxurious apartment,” he says.
“At least when it comes to food, there’s no snobbery in Singapore.”
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If you had it, would you flaunt it? That’s the question at the heart of “Crazy Rich Asians,” Kevin Kwan’s new novel about ways and woes of the wealthy in Singapore.
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http://time.com/4150168/review-star-wars-the-force-awakens/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160610013158id_/http://time.com:80/4150168/review-star-wars-the-force-awakens/
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Star Wars: The Force Awakens
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20160610013158
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When you’ve been charged with reviving one of the most obsessively beloved franchises in modern movies, is it better to defy expectations or to meet them? With Star Wars: The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams splits the difference, and the movie suffers—in the end, it’s perfectly adequate, hitting every beat. But why settle for adequacy? For the first 40 minutes or so, The Force Awakens feels like something special and fresh: For one thing, Abrams and his team of designers and technicians introduce a new star, a droid named BB-8. A roly-poly cueball with a surprisingly expressive half-dome for a head—and a vocabulary of squeaks and squiggles that are more eloquent than mere words—BB-8 is both modernist and old-fashioned at once, a marvelous creation that could have sprung from the imagination of Jules Verne. And Abrams introduces a note of glorious melancholy in the character of Rey (newcomer Daisy Ridley, charismatic in a no-nonsense way), a teenage scavenger marooned on a sandy planet, longing to find her way back to the family from whom she’s been separated. Rey’s loneliness and her self-sufficiency are intertwined. Early in the movie, when she befriends BB-8 (another orphan of sorts), it’s a meeting of kindred spirits. At that point, Abrams makes us believe anything could happen—it’s the best kind of movie feeling.
But somewhere along the way, Abrams begins delivering everything we expect, as opposed to those nebulous wonders we didn’t know we wanted. He’s taken care to do certain things right: The plot is relatively unencumbered by complicated mythology. Anyone coming to the Star Wars universe cold will be able to follow the story—the script was written by Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt (based on characters created by George Lucas), and they’re more interested in clarity than exclusivity. The story takes place 30 years after Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. The fascist First Order has risen from the remains of the old Empire. Darth Vader disciple Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is one of the chief baddies, answering to Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), a giant, scary, noseless dude who sits placidly in an oversized chair like a dark-lord version of the Lincoln Monument. The First Order hopes to destroy…everything. Luckily, the Resistance is ready to fight back: Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) is now a general; her brother, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), the last Jedi and a key player in the struggle, has gone missing, and she’s desperate to find him. The new characters folded into the mix include Finn (John Boyega), a renegade Stormtrooper who becomes an accidental hero, and stalwart Resistance fighter pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). But the wry, grizzled soul of the movie is Han Solo (Harrison Ford), who returns with his furry sidekick Chewbacca. Chewbacca hasn’t aged a bit; Han, on the other hand, looks like he’s been ’round the galaxy a few hundred times, but damned if he doesn’t wear it well.
For a while, watching The Force Awakens, it’s enjoyable enough to sink into the film’s relatively low-tech production design. Everything looks a little dusty and dirty, including BB-8, whose white-and-orange chassis is so smudged you could almost write “wash me” on its surface with your finger—it’s a marvelous touch. And the reappearance of Han Solo’s freighter ship, the Millennium Falcon, is majestic to behold: It has the look of a classic automobile that’s fallen on hard times, slightly rusty and with a fender or a piece of chrome missing here or there, but somehow keeping all its dignity intact. Abrams also introduces a delightful minor character, wise old barkeep Maz Kanata (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o)—she’s a CGI creation who looks like the love child of E.T. and Lena Horne.
And yet The Force Awakens adds up to something less than the sum of its parts. The early scenes have a relaxed, assured pace. But as the story moves forward, Abrams becomes more mired in the task of keeping the plot mechanics in gear. There’s the expected climactic battle between X-wing starfighters and TIE fighters, which is mildly exciting and nothing more—the fact that it’s punctuated with dumb dialogue like “General! Their shields are down!” “Prepare to fire!” and even the classic, “It would take a miracle to save us now,” surely doesn’t help. And the movie’s big twist, clearly intended to be a moment of Shakespearean grandeur, is handled clumsily: Instead of allowing a significant figure to have his grand moment, Abrams cuts to other characters expressing shock and dismay, as if he didn’t trust the audience to know what to feel.
The Force Awakens is hardly a failure. It has its share of charm, like the moment when Han and Leia reconnect after years of separation—they’re the classic lovers who can’t stand to be in each other’s presence for more than five minutes, but who miss each other quietly and desperately year in, year out. As Kylo Ren, Driver, kitted out in an all-black man-gown and a helmet whose elongated nose echoes the shape of his real schnozz beneath, is surprisingly menacing. In one of the movie’s finest moments, Ren—unmasked and intense—engages Rey in a major stare-down, an unholy duel between the light side of the Force and the dark. The sexual energy between them is strange and unsettling, like a theremin sonata only they can hear. But mostly, The Force Awakens strives to please instead of surprise. Abrams wants us to walk away happy. He just doesn’t give us much to take home.
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While there are elements that feel special and fresh, mostly The Force Awakens strives to please instead of surprise.
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http://fortune.com/2016/05/12/peter-jackson-screening-room-8-billion/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160610064443id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/05/12/peter-jackson-screening-room-8-billion/
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Peter Jackson: Sean Parker's Screening Room Will Add $8.5 Billion
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20160610064443
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Napster co-founder Sean Parker’s proposal to sell first-run movies to home viewers at $50 a pop has stirred up various corners of Hollywood, with big movie studios and theater chains up in arms over the Screening Room idea while multiple major filmmakers have landed on opposing sides of the argument.
The concept behind Parker’s Screening Room targets consumers who have grown accustomed to staying at home to view the growing amount of available streaming content rather than shelling out for a trip to their local movie theater. Screening Room would allow users to rent new movies immediately upon their theatrical release to stream at home through a $150 set-top box. Each movie rental would cost $50 and last for a 48-hour rental period. The startup would split the proceeds between exhibitors and studios while Screening Room would take only about a 10% cut itself.
One director in favor of Parker’s potential industry-disrupting startup is Peter Jackson, the Academy Award-winning director behind The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series.
Jackson is one of multiple directors who have publicly backed Parker’s Screening Room, including JJ Abrams, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese. Others, like Avatar director James Cameron and Interstellar‘s Christopher Nolan, have argued that the startup threatens the health of the movie industry, which turned in a record year in 2015 in terms of overall box office gross. However, while box office numbers increased, the number of actual ticket sales declined by roughly 300 million from the all-time high of 2002 to 2014, with theater chains regularly raising ticket prices to make up the difference.
Speaking to Deadline, Jackson said that the movie industry is currently “dying, slowly” while arguing that Screening Room could help the traditional movie industry add a new, healthy revenue stream by tapping into the demographic of consumers who are already eschewing trips to movie theaters. Jackson told the publication that Screening Room could create an additional $8.5 billion in annual revenue for studios and exhibitors, assuming that 20 million households join Screening Room and then rent 12 movies per year on average. He added that the extra revenue would wind up as a boon to filmmakers, with studios investing more money in film budgets and making more movies overall.
The director went on to tell Deadline that the startup’s surveys of various consumer demographics have been telling, as most people in Screening Room’s “non-target audience”—people who already regularly go to theaters—said they would not be interested in the service. That means, Jackson argued, that Screening Room would not prevent a significant chunk of moviegoers away from theaters. However, Jackson continued: “We asked the same question to our target audience; the people stuck at home, the 25-39 year olds. And 70% said ‘yes’ they would spend $50. This is what persuaded me.”
Parker and Screening Room co-founder Prem Akkaraju are working to win over some of the startup’s detractors in Hollywood. AMC, one of the country’s largest theater chains and a subsidiary of China’s Dalian Wanda Group, has reportedly signed on in support of Screening Room, though the company’s CEO has been reluctant to go on the record about the startup.
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'The Hobbit' director supports the plan to rent first-run movies for $50 a pop.
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http://fortune.com/2015/07/16/girl-in-glass-premature-babies/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160610092107id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/07/16/girl-in-glass-premature-babies/
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Premature babies: Yes, they are worth saving
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20160610092107
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In February 2014, writer Deanna Fei found herself—and her child Mila, who was born at 1 pound, 9 ounces—the subject of a media firestorm after AOL CEO Tim Armstrong cited the costs of caring for “distressed babies” as an explanation why the media company had to make cuts to its employee benefits. Fei, whose husband Peter Goodman worked at AOL-owned Huffington Post at the time, did not take the executive’s comments silently. She spoke out and ultimately received an apology from Armstrong. Fei recently published a book, Girl in Glass, describing the ordeal. In the following excerpt from her book, Fei performs a fact check on the perceptions surrounding the costs of caring for premature babies and the social biases against disabled children.
Long before Tim Armstrong singled out the medical bills of “distressed babies,” premature infants have been labeled with price tags. A typical example is a 2008 Businessweek headline that many of us might have guessed: Million-dollar Babies.
This article reports that “the cost of care for preemies is skyhigh—some fifteen times the expense of full-term infants and rising,” with an estimate of $26 billion per year: half of all hospital spending on the care of newborns. “Factor in the cost of treating all of the possible lifelong disabilities, and the years of lost productivity for the caregivers, and the real tab may top $50 billion.”
The book Too Expensive to Treat? cites the estimate that low-birth-weight babies (here defined as those born below 1,250 grams) comprise only 7 percent of newborn patients but account for over 90 percent of newborn hospital costs—“a hugely disproportionate share” that the author calls “simply remarkable.”
Caring for extremely premature infants is expensive, a fact that anyone who has ever stepped inside a NICU can surmise. But the real question is this: Compared to what?
It seems that the actual human lives saved in NICUs are not enough in themselves to justify their medical bills, which brings us to mathematical analyses of the cost-effectiveness of their existence. The Businessweek article acknowledges that “most health-care economists seem to agree that spending on preemies offers a high rate of return for all but the earliest-stage infants. The reason? The money improves both the quality and length of life, which yields big economic benefits.” In other words, investing in the care of premature babies is extremely cost-effective because the large majority grow up to become healthy, productive members of society.
Furthermore, the medical innovations that have enabled millions of premature babies to thrive have also improved the care of full-term infants, greatly contributing to a 73 percent drop in the U.S. infant mortality rate between 1960 and 2000.
But what about those “earliest-stage infants” such as Mila? Given their higher rates of death and disability and the formidable costs of their care, policymakers in England, Sweden, and Australia as well as the United States have considered designating a cutoff birth weight—five hundred, six hundred, or even seven hundred grams (five grams less than Mila weighed at birth)—below which babies would automatically be disqualified from treatment. Such grim approaches might sound reasonable from a purely economic standpoint.
However, researchers who modeled these approaches found that they resulted in meager savings for the number of potential survivors who would be forfeited: at most, a 10 percent decrease in NICU costs, which could be achieved only with the most draconian cutoff. In other words, cost savings would accrue only if care was categorically denied not just to the babies least likely to survive, but also to those most likely to thrive among extremely premature infants. Such a strategy would seem to be a hard sell even to the most ruthless bean counters.
In fact, NICUs are actually extraordinarily cost-effective once we draw a more logical comparison: not between babies who need intensive care and babies who don’t, but between babies and adults who need intensive care. While over 80 percent of ICU resources are spent on adults who go on to die, in the NICU, more than 80 percent of resources are spent on babies who ultimately survive—even among the tiniest babies. This is partly because the babies who will die tend to die quickly, regardless of heroic medical treatment.
Yet NICUs are often depicted as extravagant departments in a way that other high-cost hospital units, such as orthopedics and oncology, are not. Patients who have spinal cord injuries or need coronary bypass surgery are roughly as expensive as the average NICU patient, but we don’t generally demand that such categories of people prove themselves deserving of medical care the way we demand that premature infants justify the costs of their existence.
Much of our handwringing over those costs is premised upon the deep-rooted concern that premature infants are basically damaged goods. One ominous title that hits home, Playing God in the Nursery, exhorts us to “consider the dismal fate of a disturbing number of ‘salvaged’ babies.” The author uses those ironic quotation marks every time he describes children who survive with impairments and expresses abhorrence for their “pathetic lives.” He scoffs at the distinctions between mild, moderate, and severe handicaps, referring to a mild learning disorder as “an inability to learn to read or do arithmetic.”
This book was published back in 1985, before significant advances in the field of neonatology. But plenty of more recent accounts also imply that disabled babies are wholesale inventions of the modern NICU. Moreover, these accounts often reveal a propensity to lump all non-miracle babies together as worst-case scenarios, as if every impairment is a tragic deficit. As if death is clearly preferable to life with a disability.
Many graduates of NICUs survive with some kind of disability. Today, 15 percent of premature babies survive with permanent disabilities, down from 40 percent fifty years ago. In particular, there is a relatively high incidence of cerebral palsy among the tiniest survivors: between 5 and 10 percent.
But it is far from evident that NICUs have contributed to a rise in disability overall. While some babies with impairments wouldn’t have survived at all without neonatal care, such care also reduces the incidence of impairments among babies who would have survived in previous eras, too.
Some disabled babies will continue to be discharged by NICUs. This is less a failing of neonatal care than a fact of life.
People with disabilities constitute 15 percent of the American population: the largest minority in the country. At any moment, any one of us could join their numbers. As the disability-rights scholar Tobin Siebers points out, “The cycle of life runs in actuality from disability to temporary ability back to disability, and that only if you are among the most fortunate.”
These days, it is widely presumed that until modern times, disabled babies were invariably left to die of exposure, as if nothing could be more natural than the denial of precious resources to such forms of humanity. But compelling evidence indicates that many societies granted them as much or more dignity than we do now.
At a four-thousand-year-old burial site in Vietnam, archaeologists recently uncovered the skeleton of a boy, curled in a fetal position, who appeared to have been born with a severe disease that resulted in fused vertebrae and paralysis, rendering him unable to feed or bathe himself. Yet he lived another ten years and was carefully buried. Researchers concluded that the people around him, who likely subsisted by fishing and hunting, must have tended to the boy’s every need—and that the boy himself must have had a strong sense of his own worth.
It is striking that in a society as wealthy and advanced as ours, people with disabilities are often described as if they have nothing to offer but an occasion for pity and disgust, as if they are nothing but their afflictions. That a significant faction of people believe that a baby who is given precarious odds at birth might not deserve a chance at all. That faction included, at one point, myself.
I don’t mean to minimize the suffering of severely disabled children or their parents. The challenges that many of them face on a daily basis—chronic and debilitating pain, colossal financial tolls, relentless proximity to death—aren’t part of my current reality. In this way, too, I’m undeniably blessed.
But was my daughter clearly “worth it” only because she defied the odds? If she receives a worrying diagnosis in a few months or a few years, would the value of her life plummet?
Studies indicate that most people with disabilities express high satisfaction with their quality of life. What often torments them far more than their impairments is being regarded as unfortunate outcomes that should have been averted. And while most of us wouldn’t choose to have a disabled child, once that human being becomes a reality, few of us would truly wish the child away.
In the transformative book Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon writes, “Everyone is flawed and strange; most people are valiant, too.” Most of us, if given a chance, would immediately tap into our deepest reserves to provide a loved one with all the care we can muster. Set aside, for the moment, the question of premature infants. Imagine that the person struck by catastrophe is your wife, or your father, or your teenage daughter, or your kid brother, or even your newborn baby.
Once you rushed your loved one to the hospital, you’d probably be overwhelmingly grateful and relieved to see the teams of doctors and nurses and technicians, the flashing monitors and beeping alarms, the nests of tubes and wires. Such care wouldn’t seem extravagant at all. It would seem like an appropriate marshaling of the resources at hand for a life that you’re desperate to save.
Now imagine the doctors tell you that if they treat your loved one, they estimate a two-thirds chance of survival. And, assuming survival, a two-thirds chance of a mild to moderate disability, or no disability at all: a two-thirds chance of your loved one being generally okay.
Those were my daughter’s odds, after all—I just couldn’t see them that way. Would any of us deny our loved one treatment? Would we question their right to such care? Would we wish our loved one out of existence to spare ourselves from the agony of uncertainty, the way that I once did?
Excerpted from Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei. Published by Bloomsbury. Copyright 2015 by Deanna Fei. Excerpted with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
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Much of our handwringing over the costs of caring for premature infants is premised upon the deep-rooted notion that they are basically damaged goods.
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http://www.people.com/article/worst-neighbor-stories-reddit
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160610103358id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/worst-neighbor-stories-reddit
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Worst Neighbor Stories from Reddit : People.com
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20160610103358
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Living near other people is one of the worst aspects of modern society.
To feel better about our own living situations, we trolled Reddit for the all-time worst this-is-what-my-neighbor-does stories. And they're all
Here are the 19 worst:
"My new neighbor sucks at bass, but plays at 3am. The apartment manager says he gets a pass on mandatory quiet time because he's learning an art."
"I once had a neighbor who wanted to tell you her life story every time she saw you. I got caught by her once and subtly sent off a quick text to my mom saying 'neighbor trapped me, send help.' She came outside and said, 'Hey Collin, can you help me carry this upstairs?'"
"It starts every spring. The neighbor's kids only have one speech volume, which is scream. It sounds like children are being murdered on a daily basis. They jump all over my porch swing even though I have repeatedly asked the parents to tell them not to. They run up and down the stairs of my porch constantly. I am just waiting for one to get seriously hurt, and then it's my fault. I have a narrow driveway and last summer the one got his bike wedged between my house and my car's passenger door and seriously scratched it. Basically they just run wild and the parents either don't care, or are too drunk to notice at times. I don't know when I turned into a crotchety old man at 30, but damn those kids."
"I'm regularly woken up in the night by the old guy on the floor below shouting about noise. There is no noise."
"I find their go-kart tracks all over our property."
"I used to have a neighbor that would constantly throw trash over their back fence into my yard. Did it all the time. During the summer, I would go out to the shed in the back and find the most random shit, like a ripped open stuffed animal, used diapers, etc. I started throwing the trash back over, but it kept coming back no matter how much I battled it."
"We lived next door to this old man who sat in his front yard BLATANTLY just staring at us with binoculars. He only did it when my parents weren't home. When my mom confronted him he claimed we were lying. We weren't. So one night we hear a noise outside and my mom pulls up the blind to find herself eye to eye with this old man trying to look into our window. And then there's that other time my neighbor tried to kidnap me by trying to lure me into his car asking me
stuff, and he went to jail."
"My parents' next door neighbors are terrible, the wife in particular. When their kids were in school, the mother would sit in the driveway at 6:30 a.m. and honk the horn until they came outside to leave for school. One day my mom asked if they could refrain from doing that. OH HELL NO they can't. Honking continues, then everyone in the house decides to honk several times EVERY time they pull out of the driveway, just to be pricks. They still continue to do this years later."
"It all started when our new neighbor put up a fence that extended too far, which forced pedestrian to walk in the street, rather than the sidewalk. My dad said something to him and of course, the guy didnât listen. My dad then contacted the city – this is when it all began. Over the next year, the neighbor got his revenge: first, he placed multiple spotlights outside his house, which went on at 8pm and lit up our bedrooms. Next, he placed a school bell on the back of his house and connected it to his telephone. Every time his telephone rang, it rang. Finally, there was a garage that he technically owned, but it was connected to our house, too. When he discovered we were trying to sell our house, he painted the garage neon pink, with neon green stripes. He must of known what he was doing, because he now owns 16 of 20 properties that were on our old block. He may have been some passive-aggressive genius."
"The guy who lives above me is really popular. About 5 times an evening, I hear someone walking up the steps and knocking on his door. He must be kind of a prick, though, because they always leave and walk back down the steps about 5 minutes later."
"I had a neighbor who VACUUM CLEANED HIS DRIVEWAY."
"My neighbor broke into my house in the middle of the night in a drunken blur. We were all in our early 20s and him and his buddy, in their late 20s early 30s, lived downstairs. One night, I hear all this noise and find him passed out drunk in my hall closet clutching a pair of shoes."
"I had a really bad neighbor back in my early 20s who we caught constantly trying to sneak over in the night and steal gas from our cars and anything we left outside."
"My wife and I purchased our first house about three years ago. While moving in, there were my new neighbors drinking on their front porch, no big deal. While bringing the last load of boxes into the house, my neighbor comes up, welcomes me to the neighborhood and mentions how nice my TV is. Fast forward one week, we are headed out to dinner. This neighbor stops me before getting in the car and asks how long we will be gone (huge red flag). I lie, tell him I'm just running to the gas station one block away and will be back immediately. Twenty minutes later I get a phone call from the local police; this moron broke into my house in broad daylight with three other neighbors watching. He cut his hand on the window he was attempting to climb through and used his bleeding hand on every doorknob in my house. He is now a number in the U.S. penal system."
"My neighbor has no sense of time. One time we had to talk to him about not using power tools or splitting wood at three in the morning. What makes him worse? He gets a smaller trash can to pay less to the city, but then puts all his extra trash in our bin, so ours overfills and we have to pay extra."
"Neighbor would bang on the door to my home to purposely make my dogs bark to get me evicted. One day I pretended to leave the house and recorded him banging on the wall. Dogs barked. I rung his doorbell and showed him proof. He moved out a month later."
"We live in an apartment and we have a dog. He's super chill and awesome. There is a guy down the hall from us who has a small dog who is violent with other dogs. He frequently lets his dog out in the hall either off leash or he drops the leash (as he's locking his apartment). His dog has attacked my dog more than once. (My dog could crush the thing if he wanted to, but he's really gentle.) The best part is that when my husband complained to the building manager, he found out that the guy had actually asked the manager for advice on what to do with his dog because it's becoming more and more violent with other dogs. So, the guy knows his dog is violent, and there are other dogs that live on the same floor, and still lets his dog out in the hall without holding the leash. WTF, guy? Some dog owners piss me off."
"My next-door neighbor is lovely in nearly every way. He's friendly, has a cute dog and he brought us fish and chips for lunch on the day we moved in. He watches our house when we're away, and deals with repair people if we're at work, since he's retired. Practically perfect in every way. BUT. His garden is full of wind chimes. Like, there could well be more than 100. The constant chiming 24/7 makes me want to garrote him. I hear them in my sleep. I hear them at work. I swear they're following me. The chimes never stop."
"He takes firewood from our woodpile at night – or when he knows we're away – for use in his own fireplace. (Our neighbor across the street has seen him doing it and has kept us informed.) In the summer, he's the tomato bandit – stealing produce from our garden. This summer, I'm going to install a surveillance camera to catch him in the act."
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Living next to other people is one of the worst parts of modern society
| 124.5 | 0.928571 | 4.357143 |
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medium
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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/baby-sitter-charged-with-murder-in-babys-benadryl-death/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160610110707id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/news/baby-sitter-charged-with-murder-in-babys-benadryl-death/
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Baby sitter charged with murder in baby's Benadryl death
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20160610110707
|
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- An Ohio baby sitter accused of giving an 8-month-old boy a fatal dose of Benadryl has been given a $750,000 bond and told to have no contact with children and no unsupervised contact with her own children.
Lori Conley was arrested Friday on charges of murder and child endangering. She was arraigned Saturday in Franklin County Municipal Court and jailed, pending her release on bond. Court records don't name an attorney for her.
Authorities say the 43-year-old Conley was baby-sitting eight toddlers and infants at her Reynoldsburg, Ohio, home when she found Haddix Mulkey unresponsive May 13. He died at a Columbus hospital.
Police say the charges were delayed until toxicology tests confirmed the baby received a fatal dose of the over-the-counter allergy drug.
|
Lori Conley is accused of giving an 8-month-old Ohio boy a fatal dose of the over-the-counter allergy drug
| 6.375 | 0.958333 | 5.958333 |
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mixed
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http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jan/19/australias-offshore-detention-damages-asylum-seekers-because-its-supposed-to
|
http://web.archive.org/web/20160610133504id_/http://www.theguardian.com:80/australia-news/2016/jan/19/australias-offshore-detention-damages-asylum-seekers-because-its-supposed-to
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Australia's offshore detention damages asylum seekers because it's supposed to
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20160610133504
|
“Abyan”, “Golestan”, “Nazanin”. These people are unknown to us, save for the single pseudonyms with which they’ve been appellated.
Hamid Kehazaei’s name we at least know, even if we know little about the life he led before he came to be within the bailiwick of Australia’s offshore detention regime, under the care of which he would die.
We know, too, Reza Barati’s name and history. Onshore, we know about Mohammad Nasim Najafi and Fazel Chegeni. Because they died in detention, too.
But of those still within Australia’s arcane immigration detention regime, much less is known. Secrecy is a cornerstone of the regime.
Access to Papua New Guinea’s Manus facility is routinely denied. The government in Nauru (with one infamous exception) refuses visas to all independent journalists to even visit the country. Communications with people held in detention without charge is heavily restricted, and closely monitored.
The people who work in those detention centres face prison if they speak out about the abuses they see.
The offshore detention centres used by Australia are clearly ‘black sites’
But despite this cultivated concealment, the failures in Australia’s care are known: beyond the deaths, the systemic abuse; the instances of rape and sexual predation; the violence by guards; the corporal punishment; the deprivations; the delays in moving acutely ill people to appropriate care; the dereliction of police investigations and prosecutions.
All have been comprehensively documented, by the media, in parliamentary inquiries and in government reports.
Invariably, when people are assaulted, or raped, or die, the problems are explained as tragic accidents, aberrant “terrible incidents”, or breakdowns in operating procedures.
But many of the medical professionals who work within this system have told Guardian Australia that they do not believe the damage to asylum seekers and refugees held is accidental or an unhappy, unintended side-effect of detention.
They argue that the detention centres are “designed to damage” people, and that the illnesses, injuries, and deaths are the predictable, expected outcomes of the regime.
Detention damages people because it is supposed to.
Related: Rapes and fears for safety on Nauru uncovered by independent Moss review
Guardian Australia has spoken with more than a dozen doctors and medical professionals who have worked in immigration detention offshore and within Australia. Many would only speak anonymously, because of continuing employment within immigration or fears of prosecution.
Two key themes emerged from almost every interview: that immigration detention is designed to harm people held within it, and; that secrecy is paramount.
In a peer-reviewed paper published in the BMJ’s Journal of Medical Ethics in December, Dr David Isaacs asked: “Are healthcare professionals working in Australia’s immigration detention centres condoning torture?”
Isaacs, who worked as a doctor on Nauru, argued that Australia’s offshore detention centres – built in remote places offshore, secretive, and inaccessible – were “reminiscent of Guantanamo Bay”.
“The offshore detention centres used by Australia are clearly ‘black sites’.”
“Secrecy, which characterises recent Australian government policy on people seeking asylum, itself creates ethical issues for healthcare professionals. If they speak up to expose harms to health caused by immigration detention, they will no longer be employed and thus unable to directly improve patient health. They may even face imprisonment.”
Clinical practice is demoted below ideological outcomes
“Each individual practitioner faces the moral dilemma of whether to work in immigration detention at all and effectively condone what amounts to torture, and if they do work there, they must decide for how long and to what extent they report on harms.”
Dr Peter Young, who was formerly the director of mental health services at International Health and Medical Services (IHMS) – the company contracted to provide medical services to people in immigration detention within Australia and offshore – says detention is designed to be “an aversive experience for people”, a regime akin to torture.
“If we take the definition of torture to be the deliberate harming of people in order to coerce them into a desired outcome, I think it does fulfil that definition.
“This detention is created in such a way as to act as a deterrent, to encourage people to return [to their homeland], and to stop other people trying to seek asylum. The harmfulness is a ‘designed-in’ feature.”
Young argues detention’s secrecy is not an adjunct to the detention centre regime, or an exercise of political convenience, but a fundamental tenet.
“You can’t allow transparency, if what you’re trying to do is inflict suffering. Secrecy is necessary because these places are designed to damage.”
In a forthcoming paper, academics Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese argue that the failures of care in offshore detention are neither aberrant or accidental, rather they are the result of the system working exactly as it is designed.
“At work in Australia’s immigration policies and practices is the intertwining of militarism and punishment working hand-in-hand with the compromising of detainees’ healthcare by the drive to secure profits,” they write. “This nefarious mix results in nothing less than a ‘grotesque faux caring’ exercise that, in effect, is tantamount to torture for Australia’s refugees.”
Prioritising perceived security and profit above duty of care constitutes ... ‘damage by design’
Perera and Pugliese argue the outsourcing of health care in detention centres to a multinational firm is a fundamental conflict of interest. Companies have an obligation to shareholders to maximise profits. Australia’s policy of offshore detention is specifically designed as one of deterrence. This leaves patient care a distant third priority.
“Prioritising perceived security and profit above duty of care constitutes what we would term ‘damage by design’. The politics of compromising a detainee’s health thus becomes a ‘structural outcome’ of maintaining a punitive regime in the name of security in order to increase profits.”
Last year a Guardian Australia investigation outlined the structural conflicts faced by IHMS. The company, part of a complex, multinational corporate entity, also lists the US military as one of its largest clients.
Leaked documents from within IHMS show the company is acutely aware of its competing – often contrary –priorities in detention healthcare.
A presentation slide for senior staff said: “Mostly performance is measured in terms of deadlines. Combined with high performance thresholds, that means: conflict between clinical objectives and contractual objectives.”
Related: 'Grab from the excuse bag' – how health firm IHMS tackled asylum seeker targets
This week Guardian Australia revealed IHMS documents showing that children suffer mental illness most acutely in detention, that the mental harm of detention continues long after release. The documents also show that the immigration department was told the offshore detention population experiences “severe mental distress” at rates more than four times higher than the general Australian population.
The complaint of most asylum seekers and refugees in detention is in the minutiae – the delays in seeing doctors and dentists, the harried prescription of Panadol and water regardless of the illness. But the structural deficiencies become most apparent at times when acute care is required.
Hamid Kehazaei was suffering an infected wound on his leg, that could have been cured if the correct antibiotics were easily available. They were not and, because of bureaucratic delays in granting him a visa to travel, he was critically ill by the time he was moved. He arrived in Brisbane on life support. He died there.
When “Golestan” was due to have her baby on Nauru, the country’s only hospital was not properly equipped to handle the complexities of her delivery.
The day before she was due to give birth, Aspen Medical – a health services provider to Nauru hospital – took to searching LinkedIn for a neonatologist to fly in to oversee the delivery. Several doctors refused, arguing the best clinical decision would be to transfer Golestan. Golestan ultimately had the baby by caesarean on Nauru.
Such critical incidents are not isolated but are predictable outcomes created by the medical architecture that is established in Australia’s offshore detention centres, where in the words of one senior doctor, “clinical practice is demoted below ideological outcomes”.
Doctors who wish to use their skills to assist vulnerable people are being placed in an invidious position.
Related: Fraud 'inevitable' over asylum seeker health targets, leaked documents show
Several have told Guardian Australia they feel they are being asked to be part of something fundamentally wrong, something designed to be damaging, in order that they might make it a little less bad.
And where they see fault, they cannot speak out. The Border Force Act carries the risk of jail for “disclosure”, even if that disclosure is in the interests of saving lives.
Many doctors also feel they are being used and manipulated for political ends.
Their participation in a system that is deliberately punitive – one that is not designed to heal but to damage – validates the regime, giving it a veneer of legitimacy it does not, on any objective assessment, deserve.
They have the skills to alleviate suffering, they have dedicated their professional lives to that cause, and they see an opportunity to do that for vulnerable people in immigration detention centres.
But they can see too, that it is the centres themselves that are causing the suffering, because that is what they are designed to do.
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Healthcare on Nauru and Manus comes a distant third to deterrence and profit, experts argue, which puts doctors asked to work there in an impossible position
| 65.25 | 0.857143 | 1.5 |
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http://www.foxsports.com/arizona/story/dansby-swanson-ready-to-put-work-ethic-into-practice-at-hillsboro-081115
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160610143321id_/http://www.foxsports.com/arizona/story/dansby-swanson-ready-to-put-work-ethic-into-practice-at-hillsboro-081115
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Dansby Swanson ready to put work ethic into practice at Hillsboro
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20160610143321
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PHOENIX -- Nearly three weeks after being hit in the face with a pitch that left him with concussion symptoms and a cut that necessitated 14 stitches, Diamondbacks top pick Dansby Swanson is finally expected to suit up for one of the organization's minor league teams for the first time.
The Diamondbacks said Monday via email that Swanson would be "in uniform" Wednesday for the Hillsboro (Ore.) Hops, Arizona's short-season Single-A affiliate nearly a month after he signed his first baseball contract.
It was clear before his injury how much it meant to Swanson to take the field as a professional ballplayer.
"It's actually kind of funny just because I still haven't even graduated school yet and you're out doing incredible things," he said July 20, when he was introduced as a Diamondback three days before his injury. "It's an awesome experience. It's something, like I said, I've dreamed about this ever since I was a little kid. Now it's finally here so I'll just be able to take it in bit by bit."
That measured, focused approach has been Swanson's way for as long as Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin can remember, all the way back to Swanson's first year as a Commodore.
Swanson, who played for Corbin at Vanderbilt from 2013 to 2015, came into Corbin's office during his freshman year for a meeting after fall practices had wrapped up.
After listening and taking notes for a few minutes, he looked Corbin in the eye and simply told him, "I want to be the best player you've ever had at Vanderbilt."
"Then he just proceeded to tell me how he'd like to do it," Corbin said. "What came out of his mouth was more about being the best person he could be first. And I think in saying that, he essentially defined how he went about his three-year career here at Vanderbilt."
After missing most of his freshman year with a shoulder injury, Swanson hit .334 over his final two seasons for the Commodores while facing pitchers from the SEC, arguably the toughest baseball conference in the nation. He did so from the traditionally soft-hitting positions of shortstop and second base, where he moved out of necessity for his sophomore season.
In 2015, his junior season, Swanson returned to his natural shortstop position and hit 15 home runs, good for fifth in the conference, after hitting three in 2014.
"I just felt that he was one of those kids who came from good beginnings, great foundation," Corbin said. "And when he came here, his attitude, his investment, his way never deviated. He's one of the most consistent kids we've had in our program in every way: socially, academically, athletically."
Vanderbilt outfielder Kyle Smith, who played three years with Swanson and lived with him for two of those years, said Swanson demonstrated a relentless dedication to everything he did.
"In college, it was academics or athletics or strength training or conditioning â his drive to be successful in whatever he's doing," Smith said. "If he puts his name on something, it's going to be quality, it's going to be good."
Both Smith and Corbin spoke at length about Swanson's "care level" in baseball pursuits as well as off-field endeavors.
"He loves that locker room," Corbin said. "He loves team. He loves what it's about."
Swanson echoed those sentiments last month when he was introduced at Chase Field.
"I've tried to become close with my teammates," he said. "I think for me, my goal is be the best that I can be because that's what I can control. You can't really control the external factors, so for me, just go out there and be the best that I can be, not only as a player but as a person as well."
Corbin believes Swanson will make his way to the big leagues fairly quickly once he returns from his injury, saying that he will not be bogged down in any sort of "minor-league grind."
"He'll see this as a lifestyle," Corbin said. "It's just not going to take him very long. His skill set is just too good. His human fundamentals and his baseball fundamentals, they'll all blend in and make him the person and allow him to achieve and stay where he is. It's just plenty of contained confidence."
Corbin believes Swanson's presence elevated the Commodores to a championship level. Vanderbilt won the College World Series in 2014 and finished as runner-up this year.
"He was on a team in 2013 as a freshman and got hurt and we had one of the best teams we've ever had a Vanderbilt but yet we didn't go to Omaha," Corbin said. "And then you take Dansby and once he's front and center, we go to Omaha twice and we play in the final game twice."
Smith said Swanson is simply a standout.
"I've played with a lot of talented players but he's the one who continually wows me," Smith said. "Day after day, he does something, he makes a play, he gets a hit. I'm now in awe of many players, but with him I'm like, 'Wow, he's different.'"
|
Dansby Swanson, the Diamondbacks No. 1 draft pick, is expected to suit up for his first professional baseball game Wednesday, but the idea of approaching the game professionally is nothing new for the former Vanderbilt star.
| 26.243902 | 0.756098 | 1.487805 |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/global/hauling-new-treasure-along-the-silk-road.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160610203504id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2013/07/21/business/global/hauling-new-treasure-along-the-silk-road.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
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Hauling New Treasure Along the Silk Road
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20160610203504
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James Hill for The New York Times
Centuries ago, the cargo on the Silk Road across Asia included spices and gems. Today, itâs likely to be computers and other electronics, moved by rail along an often-desolate 7,000-mile route.
AZAMAT KULYENOV, a 26-year-old train driver, slid the black-knobbed throttle forward, and the 1,800-ton express freight train, nearly a half-mile long, began rolling west across the vast, deserted grasslands of eastern Kazakhstan, leaving the Chinese border behind.
Dispatchers in the Kazakh border town of Dostyk gave this train priority over all other traffic, including passenger trains. Specially trained guards rode on board. Later in the trip, as the train traveled across desolate Eurasian steppes, guards toting AK-47 military assault rifles boarded the locomotive to keep watch for bandits who might try to drive alongside and rob the train. Sometimes, the guards would even sit on top of the steel shipping containers.
The train roughly follows the fabled Silk Road, the ancient route linking China and Europe that was used to transport spices, gems and, of course, silks before falling into disuse six centuries ago. Now the overland route is being resurrected for a new precious cargo: several million laptop computers and accessories made each year in China and bound for customers in European cities like London, Paris, Berlin and Rome.
Hewlett-Packard, the Silicon Valley electronics company, has pioneered the revival of a route famous in the West since the Roman Empire. For the last two years, the company has shipped laptops and accessories to stores in Europe with increasing frequency aboard express trains that cross Central Asia at a clip of 50 miles an hour. Initially an experiment run in summer months, H.P. is now dispatching trains on the nearly 7,000-mile route at least once a week, and up to three times a week when demand warrants. H.P. plans to ship by rail throughout the coming winter, having taken elaborate measures to protect the cargo from temperatures that can drop to 40 degrees below zero.
Though the route still accounts for just a small fraction of manufacturersâ overall shipments from China to Europe, other companies are starting to follow H.P.âs example. Chinese authorities announced on Wednesday the first of six long freight trains this year from Zhengzhou, a manufacturing center in central China, to Hamburg, Germany, following much the same route across western China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland as the H.P. trains. The authorities said they planned 50 trains on the route next year, hauling $1 billion worth of goods; the first train this month is carrying $1.5 million worth of tires, shoes and clothes, while the trains are to bring back German electronics, construction machinery, vehicles, auto parts and medical equipment.
DHL announced on June 20 that it had begun weekly express freight train service from Chengdu in western China across Kazakhstan and ultimately to Poland. Some of H.P.âs rivals in the electronics industry are in various stages of starting to use the route for exports from China, freight executives said.
The Silk Road was never a single route, but a web of paths taken by caravans of camels and horses that began around 120 B.C., when Xiâan in west-central China â best known for its terra cotta warriors â was Chinaâs capital. The caravans started across the deserts of western China, traveled through the mountain ranges along Chinaâs western borders with what are now Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and then journeyed across the sparsely populated steppes of Central Asia to the Caspian Sea and beyond.
These routes flourished through the Dark Ages and the early medieval period in Europe. But as maritime navigation expanded in the 1300s and 1400s, and as Chinaâs political center shifted east to Beijing, Chinaâs economic activity also moved toward the coast.
Today, the economic geography is changing again. Labor costs in Chinaâs eastern cities have surged in the last decade, so manufacturers are trying to reduce costs by moving production west to the nationâs interior. Trucking products from the new inland factories to coastal ports is costly and slow. High oil prices have made airfreight exorbitantly expensive and prompted the worldâs container shipping lines to reduce sharply the speed of their vessels.
Slow steaming cuts oil consumption, but the resulting delays have infuriated shippers of high-value electronics goods like H.Pâs. Such delays drive up their costs and make it harder to respond quickly to changes in consumer demand in distant markets.
|
With freight trains as their caravans, manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard are reviving an ancient way to ship products made in China to markets in Western Europe.
| 29.034483 | 0.931034 | 1.482759 |
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http://time.com/2965787/tsa-cell-phone/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160611061500id_/http://time.com:80/2965787/tsa-cell-phone/
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Here’s Why TSA Is Worried About Your Phone
|
20160611061500
|
Though the TSA recently outlined new security measures on U.S.-bound flights, the agency’s decision to target cell phones raises several questions about the policy’s specificity and effectiveness.
Apple iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones were singled out for extra scrutiny, U.S. officials told Reuters, though Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson does not specifically name the two smartphones in TSA’s official statement. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official emphasized to TIME that the search will cover a wide range of electronic devices, and the inspection of items will be “not just focused on two manufacturers.”
Aviation and terrorism experts agree that if Apple and Samsung phones will indeed be checked more closely, then that decision is based on specific information gathered by U.S. intelligence.
“Somewhere, somehow, somebody has recovered those devices by those names, which were probably used in the process of developing an explosive that would be detonated by the use of one of those, or [U.S. officials] have first hand intelligence information,” said Glen Winn, an aviation security expert who has handled bomb threats.
R. John Hansman, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, added that most likely “there’s not anything particularly unique about Samsung [Galaxy] or iPhones in terms of their technology.”
TSA has previously expressed fears that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) may be targeting U.S.-bound planes. Suspicions grew in 2010 when two bombs capable of bringing down an airplane were discovered on a U.S.-bound cargo plane. The explosives were to be detonated by cell phone, and also contained parts of mobile phones’ electrical wiring.
The DHS official declined to comment on the specifics of TSA’s decision to ask passengers to turn on cell phones, though experts agree that asking travelers to power up phones will show “if the phone that the person has is in fact a phone,” Winn said.
What is available, however, are TSA’s public reports, which indicate that mobile phone-related seizures at U.S. airports are rare, and that most confiscations are not of improvised explosive devices. So far in 2014 TSA has cited five incidents of “cell phone” confiscation at U.S. international airports, and one incident at a U.S. airport with only domestic flights. Five seizures were stun guns disguised as phones, and one was a phone with a knife hidden inside it. None resemble any of the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy models.
More readily available indicators of rising dangers — for example, TSA’s data regarding discovery of firearms in U.S. carry-on bags — suggest that the number attempted in-air threats may be increasing.
Discovered firearms shot up by 37% from 1,320 in 2011 to 1,813 in 2013, even though TSA’s no-weapon rules have became increasingly publicized, and the intensity of TSA’s carry-on security checks remained mostly stable. (The most salient change, the Precheck Program launched in October 2011, actually relaxed and streamlined security.) As of July 3, 1,033 firearms have already been discovered in 2014.
Additionally, 84% of the firearms discovered this year were loaded. Proportions of loaded discovered firearms remain high, ranging from 74% in the first week of 2014, to 95% the week ending on Friday, April 18, with a slight positive trend. The steady increase of firearm discovery questions whether or not TSA’s new policy will deter travelers from attempting to bring explosives on board.
Data also show that since 2010 the number of round-trip flight segments connecting the Middle East, where AQAP is mostly active, and the U.S. has increased. Meanwhile, the total number of international routes scheduled for U.S. airports has decreased to 17,703 in 2013 from 17,943 in 2011.
Still, though a rise in the risk of cell phone threats is debatable, experts agree that the danger is nonetheless present. “We know that cell phones and electronic devices have been used to set off bombs,” Winn said. “That’s not a mystery. That’s a fact.”
|
Signs that danger may be on the rise.
| 86.333333 | 0.888889 | 1.333333 |
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http://www.tmz.com/2013/12/01/paul-walker-daughter-meadow-fake-facebook-shut-down/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160611084624id_/http://www.tmz.com:80/2013/12/01/paul-walker-daughter-meadow-fake-facebook-shut-down/
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Paul Walker -- Reps Shut Down Fake Daughter Site
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20160611084624
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's daughter does NOT have a public social media page ... and his reps have already shut down one site run by an impostor.
Multiple news outlets posted stories Sunday morning saying Paul's 15-year-old
-- pictured above with her dad back in June -- paid tribute the actor on her Facebook page after the crash ... only problem, it's run by a fake.
We're told Paul's people instantly sprung into action when they discovered the BS page ... and contacted Facebook to have it removed ... which they did.
|
Paul Walker's daughter does NOT have a public social media page ... and his reps have already shut down one site run by an impostor.Multiple news outlets…
| 3.290323 | 0.935484 | 20.483871 |
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http://nypost.com/2016/04/06/the-must-have-wedding-pieces-for-non-boring-brides/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160611230623id_/http://nypost.com:80/2016/04/06/the-must-have-wedding-pieces-for-non-boring-brides/
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The must-have wedding pieces for non-boring brides
|
20160611230623
|
NIFTY SHADE OF GRAY Gown, $7,990 at Carolina Herrera, 954 Madison Ave.; Platinum ring with diamonds, price upon request at Kwiat, 725 Madison Ave.; Marchesa clutch, $3,295 at modaoperandi.com
IN FINE FEATHER Gown, $4,900, and overskirt, $13,550, both at Monique Lhuillier, 19 E. 71st St.; 18-k white gold earrings with diamonds, price upon request at forevermark.com; 18-k white gold bracelet with diamonds, $36,200, and platinum ring with diamonds, price upon request, both at Kwiat; Custom fresh-flower bouquet, price upon request at crownsbychristy.com.
UNDER THE ILLUSION Dress, $6,160 at angelsanchezusa.com; 18-k white gold earrings with diamonds, price upon request at forevermark.com; 18-k vanilla gold bangle with diamonds, $17,897 at levian. com; Tiffany & Co. platinum diamond engagement ring SHINY LITTLE THINGS Judith Leiber Couture "Abracadabra" minaudière, $5,995 at bergdorfgoodman.com; Platinum diamond engagement ring, price upon request at tiffany.com; Angel Sanchez dress.
ANGEL HAIR Top, $685 and skirt, $1,250, both at houghtonnyc.com; Marchesa hair comb, $225 at nordstrom.com; 18-k white gold bracelet with diamonds, $36,200, and platinum ring with diamonds, price upon request, both at Kwiat.
SHORT AND SWEET Dress, $9,995 at lelarose.com; Pumps, $2,075 at Roger Vivier, 750 Madison Ave.; 18-k white gold stud earrings with diamonds, price upon request at forevermark.com; Diamond bracelet, $125,000 at tiffany.com; Bouquet, $250 at L'Atelier Rouge, 39 W. 29th St., "Clara" clutch, $495 at sophiawebster.com
SHEER BLISS Gown, $13,500 at Reem Acra, 730 Fifth Ave.; Headpiece, $975 at mariaelenaheadpieces.com; Platinum and diamond engagement ring, price upon request at tiffany.com.
PUMP UP THE GLAMOUR Vera Wang Bride gown, $12,900 at verawang.com; "Anouk" pumps, $1,050 at jimmychoo.com; Justin & Taylor headpiece, $180 at bhldn.com; 14-k gold earrings with diamonds and pearls, $1,760 at meiratdesigns.com; Walters Faith 18-k rose and white gold band with diamonds, $13,850 at Material Good, 120 Wooster St.
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Make a personal statement with a wedding dress that marries tradition and runway trends — for an effect that takes the cake. A see-through gown. A full-of-flirt cocktail skirt. This season, there a…
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http://fortune.com/2016/02/16/kanye-west-tidal/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160611235756id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/02/16/kanye-west-tidal/
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Kanye West's Pablo Strategy is a Risky One
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20160611235756
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Sometimes it seems like following the various pronouncements, speeches, and brain dumps from master rapper and media superstar Kanye West is getting to be a full-time job. He’s either fighting publicly with someone, or begging Mark Zuckerberg to loan him a billion dollars, or pushing a new album—or all of the above at the same time, as he is right now.
In the latest installment of the Kanye show, the rapper has decided to release his highly anticipated new album “The Life of Pablo” only on the Tidal music service, the troubled brainchild of fellow musician and entrepreneur Jay Z. According to West’s public comments on Twitter, the album will never be available on the Apple Music service or anywhere else except on Tidal.
My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 15, 2016
Given the kind of performance-art approach that Kanye seems to take to much of his public life, it’s possible that this could be a publicity stunt of some kind, a marketing gimmick to boost Tidal and demand for the album before it goes on sale through the regular channels. In the world of Kanye West, almost anything is possible.
The rapper initially said the album would stream on Tidal and be available to download on his website, but he later pulled the web version, saying he was still working on some of the tracks and that he was delaying the release for a week. Then later, he said that it would appear only on Tidal forever.
West’s announcement was definitely a big boost for Tidal—the app quickly became the most downloaded app at the Apple store over the weekend. But the news was also a big boost for file-sharing sites as well: According to a number of reports, Pablo was the number one download on many BitTorrent tracking sites, with more than 500,000 downloads.
Kanye West asks Mark Zuckerberg for $1 billion
On top of the on-again, off-again status of the album, there were reports of some confusion on Tidal, in which a number of users had their credit cards charged for a purchase but didn’t receive the album, and that may have accelerated the BitTorrent downloading. But the Tidal exclusivity probably didn’t help much.
Tidal was launched by Jay Z and some of his fellow musicians—including his wife, superstar pop artist Beyoncé—in March of 2015 as an alternative to music services such as Spotify, which some musicians believe doesn’t pay enough to artists for their work. Taylor Swift has also kept her music off Spotify in protest.
If in fact he follows through on it, however, Kanye West’s Tidal exclusive is a somewhat risky strategy, especially for someone who claimed on Twitter that he is $53 million in debt and has been asking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Larry Page for financial assistance.
Mark Zuckerberg invest 1 billion dollars into Kanye West ideas
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 14, 2016
Tidal may be run by artists, for artists, but to a large number of consumers it probably just looks like an expensive music service that doesn’t have as much content as Spotify or Apple. It costs $9.99 a month or $19.99 for the “lossless” high-quality version—there is no free tier, unlike Spotify. While there are no doubt some fans who will be willing to pay more to support the artists they like, the majority will probably balk.
A smarter approach for Kanye West would be to use the “windowing” approach that some other artists such as Adele have used: This involves putting a new album or song on a specific service or selling through the web for a short period of time, to increase demand, and then releasing it to the world through other services later.
Sign up for Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
This may in fact be the strategy that Kanye ultimately has in mind for Pablo, and his recent “Tidal exclusive for all time” comments may just be a marketing pitch for his friend’s music service, or the usual Kanye West bluster. If it’s the latter, it may eventually look smart. But right now, it looks like it could be a big mistake.
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Kanye's decision to only offer his new album on Tidal could be a smart marketing strategy or it could be a giant mistake
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http://fortune.com/2016/02/03/mark-zuckerberg-fourth-richest/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160612003259id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/02/03/mark-zuckerberg-fourth-richest/?
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Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Is Now Fourth-Richest in the World
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20160612003259
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Mark Zuckerberg now has even more money to give away.
The Facebook FB co-founder is now the fourth-richest person in the world, thanks to his company’s surging stock sending his fortune north of the $50 billion-mark this week, according to Bloomberg. The total moves Zuckerberg past Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu as well as Amazon AMZN CEO Jeff Bezos on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Zuckerberg still trails third-place billionaire Warren Buffett by nearly $10 billion, while Microsoft msft founder Bill Gates and Spanish fashion industry billionaire Armancio Ortega are the first- and second-richest people in the world, respectively.
Facebook has weathered this year’s global market volatility relatively well, which helps explain Zuckerberg’s rise through the ranks of the billionaire class. Bloomberg notes that Zuckerberg is the only person in the top five of the world’s richest people to see his fortune increase this year. Facebook’s stock is up roughly 8% this year after the company delivered a blockbuster quarterly earnings report last week.
It’s been an eventful few months for Zuckerberg. The Facebook cofounder and his wife welcomed a baby daughter at the end of 2015, at which point they pledged to eventually give away 99% of their company shares. Meanwhile, earlier this week, Facebook passed Exxon Mobil XOM , the world’s largest publicly-traded oil company, in terms of total market value.
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He's richer than Jeff Bezos.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/arts/all-the-presidents-newsmen.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160612054646id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2005/01/16/arts/all-the-presidents-newsmen.html
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All the President's Newsmen
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20160612054646
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ONE day after the co-host Tucker Carlson made his farewell appearance and two days after the new president of CNN made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last nine yards to the network guillotine, "Crossfire" came up with the worst show in its fabled 23-year history.
This was a half-hour of television so egregious that it makes Jon Stewart's famous pre-election rant seem, if anything, too kind. This time "Crossfire" wasn't just "hurting America," as Mr. Stewart put it, by turning news into a nonsensical gong show. It was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, complicit in the cover-up of a scandal.
I do not mean to minimize the CBS News debacle and other recent journalistic outrages at The New York Times and elsewhere. But the Jan. 7 edition of CNN's signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth.
On this particular "Crossfire," the featured guest was Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, talk-show host and newspaper columnist (for papers like The Washington Times and The Detroit Free Press, among many others, according to his Web site). Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, he had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon (translation: shill for) the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind policy in various media venues during an election year. Given that "Crossfire" was initially conceived as a program for tough interrogation and debate, you'd think that the co-hosts still on duty after Mr. Carlson's departure might try to get some answers about this scandal, whose full contours, I suspect, we are only just beginning to discern.
But there is nothing if not honor among bloviators. "On the left," as they say at "Crossfire," Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant, offered condemnations of the Bush administration but had only soft questions and plaudits for Mr. Williams. Three times in scarcely as many minutes Mr. Begala congratulated his guest for being "a stand-up guy" simply for appearing in the show's purportedly hostile but entirely friendly confines. When Mr. Williams apologized for having crossed "some ethical lines," that was enough to earn Mr. Begala's benediction: "God bless you for that."
"On the right" was the columnist Robert Novak, who "in the interests of full disclosure" told the audience he is a "personal friend" of Mr. Williams, whom he "greatly" admires as "one of the foremost voices for conservatism in America." Needless to say, Mr. Novak didn't have any tough questions, either, but we should pause a moment to analyze this "Crossfire" co-host's disingenuous use of the term "full disclosure."
Last year Mr. Novak had failed to fully disclose -- until others in the press called him on it -- that his son is the director of marketing for Regnery, the company that published "Unfit for Command," the Swift boat veterans' anti-Kerry screed that Mr. Novak flogged relentlessly on CNN and elsewhere throughout the campaign. Nor had he fully disclosed, as Mary Jacoby of Salon reported, that Regnery's owner also publishes his subscription newsletter ($297 a year). Nor has Mr. Novak fully disclosed why he has so far eluded any censure in the federal investigation of his outing of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, while two other reporters, Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time, are facing possible prison terms in the same case. In this context, Mr. Novak's "full disclosure" of his friendship with Mr. Williams is so anomalous that it raised many more questions than it answers.
That he and Mr. Begala would be allowed to lob softballs at a man who may have been a cog in illegal government wrongdoing, on a show produced by television's self-proclaimed "most trusted" news network, is bad enough. That almost no one would notice, let alone protest, is a snapshot of our cultural moment, in which hidden agendas in the presentation of "news" metastasize daily into a Kafkaesque hall of mirrors that could drive even the most earnest American into abject cynicism. But the ugly bigger picture reaches well beyond "Crossfire" and CNN.
Mr. Williams has repeatedly said in his damage-control press appearances that he was being paid the $240,000 only to promote No Child Left Behind. He also routinely says that he made the mistake of taking the payola because he wasn't part of the "media elite" and therefore didn't know "the rules and guidelines" of journalistic conflict-of-interest. His own public record tells us another story entirely. While on the administration payroll he was not only a cheerleader for No Child Left Behind but also for President Bush's Iraq policy and his performance in the presidential debates. And for a man who purports to have learned of media ethics only this month, Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC.
He took to CNN last October to give his own critique of the CBS News scandal, pointing out that the producer of the Bush-National Guard story, Mary Mapes, was guilty of a conflict of interest because she introduced her source, the anti-Bush partisan Bill Burkett, to a Kerry campaign operative, Joe Lockhart. In this Mr. Williams's judgment was correct, but grave as Ms. Mapes's infraction was, it isn't quite in the same league as receiving $240,000 from the United States Treasury to propagandize for the Bush campaign on camera. Mr. Williams also appeared with Alan Murray on CNBC to trash Kitty Kelley's book on the Bush family, on CNN to accuse the media of being Michael Moore's "p.r. machine" and on Tina Brown's CNBC talk show to lambaste Mr. Stewart for doing a "puff interview" with John Kerry on "The Daily Show" (which Mr. Williams, unsurprisingly, seems to think is a real, not a fake, news program).
But perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all "journalists," was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced "cheap shot journalism" in which "the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective."
This is a scenario out of "The Manchurian Candidate." Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's "Nightline" recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, "Stolen Honor," under the rubric of "news" in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.) Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of "objective" news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry.
Ever since Mr. Williams was exposed by USA Today, he has been stonewalling all questions about what the Bush administration knew of his activities and when it knew it. In his account, he was merely a lowly "subcontractor" of the education department. "Never was the White House ever mentioned anytime during this," he told NBC's Campbell Brown, as if that were enough to deflect Ms. Brown's observation that "the Department of Education works for the White House." For its part, the White House is saying that the whole affair is, in the words of the press secretary, Scott McClellan, "a contracting matter" and "a decision by the Department of Education." In other words, the buck stops (or started) with Rod Paige, the elusive outgoing education secretary who often appeared with Mr. Williams in his pay-for-play propaganda.
But we now know that there have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Census Bureau and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have all sent out news "reports" in which, to take one example, fake newsmen purport to be "reporting" why the administration's Medicare prescription-drug policy is the best thing to come our way since the Salk vaccine. So far two Government Accountability Office investigations have found that these Orwellian stunts violated federal law that prohibits "covert propaganda" purchased with taxpayers' money. But the Williams case is the first one in which a well-known talking head has been recruited as the public face for the fake news instead of bogus correspondents (recruited from p.r. companies) with generic eyewitness-news team names like Karen Ryan and Mike Morris.
Or is Mr. Williams merely the first one of his ilk to be exposed? Every time this administration puts out fiction through the news media -- the "Rambo" exploits of Jessica Lynch, the initial cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire -- it's assumed that a credulous and excessively deferential press was duped. But might there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? In response to questions at the White House, Mr. McClellan has said that he is "not aware" of any other such case and that he hasn't "heard" whether the administration's senior staff knew of the Williams contract -- nondenial denials with miles of wiggle room. Mr. Williams, meanwhile, has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has "no doubt" that there are "others" like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that "this happens all the time." So far he is refusing to name names -- a vow of omertà all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that "third-rate burglary" during the Nixon administration.
If CNN, just under new management, wants to make amends for the sins of "Crossfire," it might dispatch some real reporters to find out just which "others" Mr. Williams is talking about and to follow his money all the way back to its source.
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Frank Rich column contends that conservative journalist Armstrong Williams, featured guest on Crossfire television show, was not confronted aggressively enough by host Paul Begala about William's admission that he received $240,000 from Education Dept to promote Bush administration's 'No Child Left Behind' program; photo (M)
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http://fortune.com/2015/11/30/formula-one-driverless-racing/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160612061105id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/11/30/formula-one-driverless-racing/
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Is Roborace a Risk to the Future of Driverless Cars?
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20160612061105
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Formula E racing, Formula One’s all-electric cousin, announced plans for a race series featuring autonomous electric cars starting in 2016.
The series, called Roborace, would be the first commercial races using self-driving car technology, and a highly public showcase of how advanced it has become. Organizers are hoping that the races will attract a younger audience to motorsports by creating a sci-fi version that just a decade ago would have seemed impossible to pull off.
The autonomous car races, announced on Friday, will take place before Formula E events using the same tracks. This season, Formula E’s races wind through the hearts of cities including Beijing and Buenos Aires.
Formula E, which premiered in 2014, is overseen by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the same body that organizes Formula One. The Formula E cars reach maximum speeds of around 140 mph compared to more than 200 mph for F1.
Formula E has been marketed as a forward-looking effort to attract a younger crowd to auto racing through innovative (and controversial) features like music played at the track during races. Another is an unorthodox system called FanBoost that gives drivers who win an audience vote a one-time jolt of power for their cars that lets them drive faster.
Roboracing is intended to build on that youth appeal. Formula E describes Roborace as “a global platform to show that robotic technologies and artificial intelligence can co-exist with us in real life,” clearly conscious that it’s as much a PR push as a competition.
Roborace would continue a competitive tradition that has been fundamental to driverless car development. Starting in 2004, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, hosted a series of “Grand Challenges” that offered big cash prizes to teams racing autonomous off-road vehicles through the Mojave Desert. There were no finishers the first year, but a team from Stanford took the prize the second year, and the competition has continued to spur advances in robotic vehicle design.
Operating an autonomous car at 140 miles an hour would present a new set of challenges for sensor and software design. But it could also be a new wrinkle for the nascent autonomous vehicle industry, which has pitched driverless cars as a safer alternative to human drivers. Speed is hardly the emphasis. Last month, for example, police stopped a Google driverless car for traveling too slowly.
The urban nature of Formula E courses creates an obvious tension between safety and speed. The image of super-fast robot cars zipping through downtown London could be great for public acceptance of driverless systems—right up until one collides with fencing around the track and kills a spectator. That has happened 46 times in conventional auto racing between 1990 and 2010.
By some accounts, in fact, danger is fundamental to the appeal of motorsports—seemingly acknowledged by Formula E’s own excited highlighting of crashes. But that could make autonomous vehicle designers reluctant to even participate in Roborace because of the potential risk to their image. Then there’s the complicated web of liability that is still unresolved even for autonomous passenger vehicles being tested on city streets.
Formula E hasn’t yet announced any participating teams, although it is being co-sponsored by the London-based venture capital firm Kinetik, overseen by Yotaphone creator Denis Sverdlov. One of the companies Kinetik has invested in, the electric truck maker Charge, will provide electrified trucks to service the robo-racers.
Have a look at one robocar that’s the opposite of fast in this Fortune video:
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Robots, start your engines.
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http://fortune.com/2016/04/05/quality-destroys-good-leaders/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160612092617id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/04/05/quality-destroys-good-leaders/
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Quality That Destroys So Many Good Leaders
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20160612092617
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The MPW Insider network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in business contribute answers to timely questions about careers and leadership. Today’s answer to the question: What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned in your career? is by Sharon Price John, CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop.
The most important lesson I’ve learned in my career is to remain open to listening and learning. In other words, as my southern mom used to tell me, “Don’t get too big for your britches.” After a few years in business — and a certain amount of success — it is sometimes easy to think you‘ve seen and heard it all. When I first entered the ranks of management, this occasionally caused me to jump to conclusions or rush a presenter because I was sure I already knew what they were going to say. It also led to missed opportunities, such as asking clarifying questions that may have resulted in a great discussion or a better outcome. It was moments like these, where I am sure the presenter felt disenfranchised and, on top of that, I missed a moment to create an environment where people felt empowered to share ideas or concerns. The ugly truth is that the tendency to stop learning happens when “ego” has a bigger presence than “confidence” in your management style. Confidence is an important leadership attribute as decisions that affect people’s lives and involve large sums of money are made regularly with imperfect or insufficient information. But you don’t have to be egotistical to be confident.
See also: The One Skill Rebecca Minkoff Says Every Woman Needs Understanding the difference between these qualities as you develop your own management style can make a big impact in your career. Why? Well, I’ve come to learn that not only is ego-driven leadership destructive to the quality of the decisions being made, it also negatively impacts the potential for successful execution because employees don’t feel any ownership of the direction.
Additionally, people may avoid sharing bad news with an ego-driven leader. Excessive ego in senior leaders can dismantle the soul of an organization – and here’s the irony – it is also destructive to the leader. Ego inhibits your ability to continuously learn (which is critical for you to advance) and your ability to effectively teach (which is critical for the organization to advance). Unfortunately, ego often hides in the shroud of confidence, but it can be exposed with a willingness to ask yourself if are looking for the right answer or just looking to be right.
So the next time you feel ego rearing its ugly head, try this: consciously consider the possibility that you might not know everything (which, by the way, you don’t). If you can really listen, you just might learn something, make a better decision, and engage your team in the execution. Plus, you will avoid having to buy a larger pair of pants.
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Don't let success stop you from learning
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/books/a-boys-epic-quest-borough-by-borough.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160612154335id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2005/03/22/books/a-boys-epic-quest-borough-by-borough.html
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A Boy's Epic Quest, Borough by Borough
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20160612154335
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'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' By Jonathan Safran Foer Illustrated. 326 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $24.95.
With his new book, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," 28-year-old Jonathan Safran Foer demonstrates the same high-flown ambition that brought his 2002 debut novel, "Everything Is Illuminated," bouquets of critical kudos but with decidedly more cloying results.
That earlier book tackled the subject of the Holocaust and the uses of memory; this novel explores the nature of grief and the difficulty of human connection through the prism of 9/11 and the World War II firebombing of Dresden. While it contains moments of shattering emotion and stunning virtuosity that attest to Mr. Foer's myriad gifts as a writer, the novel as a whole feels simultaneously contrived and improvisatory, schematic and haphazard.
The core problem has to do with the novel's 9-year-old hero. Oskar Schell, whose father died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, should be a highly sympathetic character: a clever, sensitive boy, grief-stricken over his father's death, neglected by his self-absorbed mother, and beset by insomnia, depression and panic attacks. Unfortunately, he comes across as an entirely synthetic creation, assembled out of bits and pieces of famous literary heroes past. Like J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, Oskar wanders around New York City, lonely, alienated and on the verge, possibly, of an emotional breakdown. Like Günter Grass's Oskar Matzerath in "The Tin Drum," he plays a musical instrument (in his case, a tambourine) while commenting on the fearful state of the world around him. And like Saul Bellow's Herzog, he writes letters to people he doesn't know.
To make matters worse, Mr. Foer has endowed Oskar with an exasperating precocity that's reminiscent less of Salinger's Glass-family kids than those annoying child guests on late-night talk shows. A devotee of the Internet, Oskar is a chatty font of trivia on everything from the number of birds that die smashing into windows to the number of locks installed every day in New York City. He hands out calling cards that identify him as an "inventor, jewelry designer, jewelry fabricator, amateur entomologist, Francophile, vegan, origamist, pacifist, percussionist, amateur astronomer, computer consultant, amateur archeologist, collector." And like the smarmy Eddie Haskell on "Leave It to Beaver," he's constantly flattering women his mother's age by telling them they're beautiful, sometimes adding that he'd like to kiss them.
Oskar's favorite expression for feeling depressed is wearing "heavy boots," a phrase he repeats endlessly throughout the novel. His favorite pastime is inventing things that don't exist, like "a kite-string bracelet," little microphones that would play "the sounds of our hearts through little speakers" and "incredibly long ambulances that connected every building to a hospital." "What if you had to water skyscrapers," he wonders, "and play classical music to them, and know if they like sun or shade?"
After his father's death, Oskar discovers in his dad's closet a blue vase containing an envelope marked Black; inside is a key to what appears to be a safe-deposit box. Oskar becomes obsessed with finding out whom the key belongs to, and his quest takes him on a journey through the five boroughs of New York. He begins calling on all the people named Black he can find, asking if they knew his father or if they know anything about his father's key.
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Michiko Kakutani reviews book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer; photos (M)
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http://fortune.com/2016/04/04/heres-why-shares-of-homebuilder-pulte-are-falling-down/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160612161106id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/04/04/heres-why-shares-of-homebuilder-pulte-are-falling-down/
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Here's Why Shares of Homebuilder Pulte Are Falling Down
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20160612161106
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U.S. homebuilder Pulte phm said on Monday that Chief Executive Richard Dugas would retire effective May 2017, bowing to a demand from founder and Chairman Emeritus Bill Pulte.
Dugas’s decision to retire is due in part to the actions of Pulte, who has demanded an immediate CEO change and is seeking a “different direction” for the company, Pulte said.
Pulte slipped to the No. 3 position among U.S. homebuilders in 2014, from No. 2 the year before, partly as labor shortages delayed home closings and rising labor and material costs hit margins.
“In an effort to avoid a contested public battle that would not be in the interests of shareholders, Mr. Dugas offered to accelerate and make public the Board’s succession plan, prompting today’s announcement,” the company said in a statement.
Pulte‘s board has formed a special committee of independent directors to search for Dugas’s successor, the company said.
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The founder wanted a change.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/22/nyregion/off-duty-police-officer-and-store-owner-are-slain-in-queens.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160612165545id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1996/12/22/nyregion/off-duty-police-officer-and-store-owner-are-slain-in-queens.html?
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Off-Duty Police Officer and Store Owner Are Slain in Queens
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20160612165545
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An off-duty police officer -- one of a handful who initiated New York City's heralded community policing program in 1990 -- and the owner of a Queens check cashing store who employed him as a part-time security guard were waylaid and shot to death by armed robbers yesterday morning as they opened the business.
Confronted by two to four gunmen as they stepped from their cars just after 7 A.M. at the Astoria Boulevard Check Cashing Corporation, at 94-21 Astoria Boulevard in East Elmhurst, the victims, Officer Charles A. Davis, 38, and Ira Epstein, 40, were forced to unlock a security gate and the front door and then were shoved inside and fatally wounded in a fusillade of gunfire.
A woman in an apartment across the street saw some of what was happening, heard shots and called the police as the robbers fled on foot. Officers who raced to the scene a few blocks south of La Guardia Airport found Mr. Epstein, who had been shot twice in the body, dead on the floor.
Officer Davis, shot in the chest, hip and leg, was found with his fully loaded gun in hand, suggesting that he and Mr. Epstein had been shot when the officer drew his weapon, the police said. Officer Davis was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital Center, but was pronounced dead shortly after 8 A.M. He was the sixth police officer killed this year, and the second to be slain while off duty. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir spoke to the officer's wife, Angela, and 6-year-old daughter, Arielle, at the hospital.
Later, as the search for the killers spread through the city, the Mayor said investigators had ''very active leads'' and ''a good deal of information to work with.'' He also praised Officer Davis, who was assigned to the Warrants Squad in Manhattan, which arrests people who fail to show up for court dates or who are otherwise sought by the authorities.
Six years ago, Officer Davis was in the vanguard of the Police Department's widely applauded program to put police officers back on the streets, so they could become closer to people in their neighborhoods and get to know crime and community problems at a grass-roots level. It began in Jamaica, Queens, with 25 officers and now encompasses thousands throughout the city.
''This was a terrible tragedy and a great loss to the city,'' Mr. Giuliani said of the officer's slaying. ''Officer Davis was an officer with a fine reputation. He was an exceptionally good police officer. Our prayers and our sympathy and our condolences go out to the family.''
The killings stunned residents and business people along Astoria Boulevard, where Mr. Epstein, called Mike by acquaintances, was widely known as a kind, friendly man who went out of his way to help strangers and poor people cash checks and wire money.
And some of his associates noted that the business of check cashing was one of the most dangerous in New York City, handling large sums of cash behind bullet-proof windows and often being robbed. ''All these guys know the kind of business they're in,'' said Walter Nicolich, who maintained a microfilm machine at Mr. Epstein's store. ''It's a horrible business. This is the worst business to be in.''
According to the police and witnesses, Officer Davis, who lived in St. Albans, Queens, and had been a member of the force since 1988, arrived at the store about 7 A.M., parking his red Nissan Pathfinder sports utility vehicle.
As he stepped out, he was met by the gunmen, according to the woman who lives across the street and saw some of what happened. The woman, who insisted that she not be identified, said she saw several men standing outside the store, one of them with his hands up.
''I wondered why he had his hands up,'' she said. She said Officer Davis then unlocked and opened the security gate covering the front of the store.
As that was happening, Mr. Epstein drew up in his silver, late-model Mercedes-Benz, parking behind Officer Davis's car. As he got out, he, too, was confronted by the gunmen. The woman across the street recalled that Mr. Epstein then unlocked the front door, apparently at gunpoint.
''I knew they were trying to rob Mike,'' the woman said. ''They went inside, pushed their way in, but they never turned the lights on. I called 911. It was so scary.''
As she was telephoning, the woman said, she heard at least two shots from across the street, though the police said at least five shots were fired. ''I could hear it through the window,'' she said. Then, the woman said, she heard the store's alarm, and a man in a green jacket came running out. She did not get a good look at the assailants. ''I was concerned that Mike could be bleeding to death,'' she said.
The police found the front door open and both victims sprawled on the floor just inside. An inner door, leading to the area behind the bulletproof glass where business was transacted and cash was kept, had not been unlocked, investigators said. It was unclear what, if anything, was taken, the police said.
While the Ultimate Touch hair salon and the Lucky Star Restaurant, which flank Astoria Check Cashing, were closed at the time of the shootings, other businesses on the block between 94th and 95th streets were open, including a grocery store, a stationery shop and a restaurant, Cream of the Crop, across the street.
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An off-duty police officer -- one of a handful who initiated New York City's heralded community policing program in 1990 -- and the owner of a Queens check cashing store who employed him as a part-time security guard were waylaid and shot to death by armed robbers yesterday morning as they opened the business. Confronted by two to four gunmen as they stepped from their cars just after 7 A.M. at the Astoria Boulevard Check Cashing Corporation, at 94-21 Astoria Boulevard in East Elmhurst, the victims, Officer Charles A. Davis, 38, and Ira Epstein, 40, were forced to unlock a security gate and the front door and then were shoved inside and fatally wounded in a fusillade of gunfire.
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8 Surprising Things You Need to Know About Retirement
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As you advance toward retirement, it's a good idea to start sharpening the focus of your retirement vision. You need to figure out how you'll spend your time, what your retirement budget will look like and where your money will come from in retirement.
But as you build your retirement plan, you may discover a few unexpected twists along the way. The sooner you confront them, the better you can prepare. Here are eight surprising things you may not know about retirement.
Once you start receiving Social Security checks, it may come as a surprise at tax time that Uncle Sam wants some of that money back.
, depending on your income. In 13 states, you'll owe
Withdrawals of pretax money that you contributed to a 401(k) or a traditional IRA throughout your working years also will trigger a federal and possibly a state income tax bill. (The one bright spot:
After-tax 401(k) contributions and nondeductible IRA contributions can be taken out tax-free, too.)
When devising your retirement income plan, take taxes into account. By having taxable accounts, tax-deferred accounts and tax-free accounts, you'll have some flexibility in managing and possibly
Although retirement-account withdrawals and Social Security benefits are subject to tax, there is some good news for retirees when it comes to taxes:
Taxpayers 65 and older, for instance, qualify for a bigger standard deduction on their federal tax returns.
Many states offer tax breaks on all or part of your retirement income. Mississippi, for instance, doesn't tax any retirement income. Tennessee and New Hampshire, which only tax dividends and interest, both offer breaks on those taxes to seniors. Some states offer special breaks for retirees on sales taxes and property taxes. Check out the tax breaks your state offers by using Kiplinger's
When you hit age 65, it's time to
. But just as with the health insurance you've had throughout your working years, you'll have to pay premiums for Medicare coverage and co-pays on covered services. And some services -- such as long-term care -- aren't covered at all.
The average 65-year-old couple will pay $240,000 in out-of-pocket costs for health care during retirement, according to Fidelity Investments. And that does not include those potential long-term-care costs.
can help cover some of your out-of-pocket costs. Or instead of traditional Medicare and a medigap policy, you can enroll in
, which provides health coverage through a private insurer.
, which can help pay for home health aides or care in an assisted-living facility or nursing home.
You know you've made it into your golden years when you have earned the right to a senior discount. Usually these discounts are offered to folks 60 or older, though some (such as AARP member discounts) may be available starting at age 50.
But buyer beware: Sometimes other discounts can save older consumers more money. Comparison shop before accepting a discounted senior rate. For instance, if you're booking a stay at a hotel, find out if the hotel offers a senior rate. Then double-check with a discount travel Web site, such as Hotels.com, to see if you can score a better deal on the price. Also determine whether other discounts, such as an AARP or AAA member discount, might beat the hotel's own senior rate.
Many youngsters like to cite their age in half years, such as "five and a half" or "seven and a half." In retirement, you'll resurrect that thinking because two key milestones rely on half years. And if you aren't mindful of them, you could end up getting socked by Uncle Sam.
Once you hit age 59 1/2, you are no longer subject to the 10% early-withdrawal penalty if you take money out of your IRA or 401(k). Withdrawals of your earnings from a Roth IRA will no longer be subject to that penalty, either (assuming you've owned a Roth IRA for at least five years).
And starting in the year in which you turn 70 1/2, you must take required minimum distributions from traditional IRAs and 401(k)s. More on RMDs in a moment . . .
Once you turn age 70 1/2, Uncle Sam mandates that you take
(except from the 401(k) of your current employer if you are still working and own less than 5% of the company). If you haven't taken
by April 1 of the year following the year you turn 70 1/2, Uncle Sam will sock you with a hefty penalty -- 50% of the shortfall. For instance, if your RMD was supposed to be $10,000, your penalty will be $5,000.
But just because you have to take money out of the tax shelter
. If you don't need the money to live on, you can instead reinvest the money in a taxable account.
Workers saving for retirement are often focused on their retirement date. But that's only the beginning of potentially decades that your nest egg is going to have to provide your income. If you retire at 65 and die at 95, that's 30 years of annual income you'll need -- which could be almost as long as your working career. Life expectancies are increasing, and the odds are good that at least one spouse, if not both, is going to live into his or her nineties. (You can
When creating your retirement income plan, there are a number of ways to protect against "longevity risk" -- that is, the risk of living longer than your money lasts.
in your nest egg, which can provide growth over the long term and help protect you from the risk that inflation will eat up your money.
A smart move to maximize lifetime Social Security income is having the higher earner delay his or her benefit until age 70, which will boost that benefit by 32% a month for those whose full retirement age is 66. That boosted benefit will last the lifetime of the surviving spouse; it can't be outlived, and it comes with an annual inflation adjustment, too.
Another option to make sure you have money to live on in your old age: Consider a
. This annuity requires a smaller investment up front in exchange for bigger guaranteed annual payouts that typically start around age 85. New government rules allow you to invest in one through retirement accounts.
If you are still working later in life, even part-time, you can still save in tax-advantaged retirement accounts. If your employer offers a 401(k), you can contribute to that plan; consider socking away at least enough to get any company match.
After you hit age 70 1/2, you can no longer contribute to a traditional IRA, but if you have earned income you can still contribute after-tax money to a Roth IRA. If you are self-employed, you have a
, such as setting up a solo 401(k).
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As you advance toward retirement, it's a good idea to start sharpening the focus of your retirement vision.
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How--And How Not--To Sell Luxury
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Lewis Cutillo founded the luxury men’s shoe company Bontoni in 2004. The Italian-made loafers, brogues and lace-ups start at $1,000 per pair, with made-to-measure versions beginning at $4,000. Cutillo’s stockists include New York’s upscale department store Bergdorf Goodman and San Francisco’s Wilkes Bashford.
While Bontoni is just 5 years old, its competitors, such as John Lobb (established in London, 1849) and Berluti (established in Paris, 1895), are steeped in history. That lack of experience didn’t deter Cutillo and his co-partner Franco Gazzani from entering the sector, but in today’s economic climate, it might have. In our fast-paced world, luxury is associated with tradition and a rich, detailed past. It will take years for Bontoni to reach the same level of prestige enjoyed by its closest competitors. However, the high quality of its product–hand-sculpted and made from the finest Italian leather–has allowed it to slowly penetrate its desired market.
Cutillo is the target audience for The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands. Authored by a marketing and brand expert, Jean-Noël Kapferer, and a seasoned luxury industry executive, Vincent Bastien, the book sells itself as an instructional manual for executives that aspire to build a luxury brand. Each chapter focuses on one facet of the process–from pricing to distributing your product–and how these steps make brands in this category very different from other goods, such as prestige products–which are pricey but not exclusive–and mass products, which include any item accessible to the majority of the public.
Problem is, in an effort to prove themselves as experts in luxury brand management, the two authors miss the point, which is to teach their reader how to run and market a luxury product in today’s world. Cutillo and his contemporaries aren’t going to learn anything they didn’t already know by reading this book. And those completely new to the industry will miss out on key facts that help shape the contemporary world of luxury.
The book starts off by offering a short history of luxury, explaining that its origins lie in the fact that, as humans, we are all too aware of our own mortality. The authors argue that the ultimate luxury is to be able to live beyond death, and that by collecting items that elevate our status in society it helps us to unconsciously create a legacy. (Heirlooms are part of this: Your grandmother’s diamond ring or brooch, passed on from generation to generation, keeps her memory alive. That’s probably part of the reason that she bought it.)
This is certainly the most philosophical part of the book, but it also might be the most educational. Those that buy into the idea of a luxury brand are the most loyal customers. Before you establish a brand, you must create a mythology around it. (For example, while Bontoni is a new label, owner Cutillo’s distant cousin has been creating made-to-measure shoes in a small Italian village for years. The company uses that story to create some sense of history.)
From there, however, Kapferer and Bastien swerve in and out of offering useful information–such as graphs and charts that explain the structure of the traditional luxury business model–and arguing points that frankly don’t make sense in the year 2009; if this book had a 2000 copyright on it, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
For one, the duo’s argument against keeping luxury goods out of e-commerce is plain old bad advice. In Chapter 10, entitled “Distribution and the Internet Dilemma,” the authors state that “On today’s Web, the personal relationship disappears quickly: The Internet is an anonymous universe.” If that were true, the Web would be an awful place to sell luxury goods.
It’s not: An October 2008 survey of high-net-worth individuals–conducted by Google and Stevens, Pa.-based research firm Unity Marketing–found that high-earning online shoppers made more per year on average than high-earning in-store shoppers. Their average net worth was also much higher– $21.7 million for wealthy online shoppers, compared with $3.4 million for wealthy in-store shoppers. Wealthy online shoppers also spent more per year on luxury goods: $114,632, compared with $23,000 for wealthy in-store shoppers. While online shops might not provide the same intimate level of customer service as their brick-and-mortar counterparts, they offer something much more valuable, especially in today’s society: convenience.
Sure, there are examples of luxury brands still wary of selling goods online; Chanel is one. But others have been doing it for the last decade, and many have gotten on board in the past two or three years. Today, you’ll find Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga and Dior –all true luxury brands–shilling goods online. To completely advise against selling products on the Internet is not only foolish, it’s irresponsible.
The Google/Unity Marketing study also showed that those who buy goods online are typically younger than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. That’s not a surprise, but for a fledgling label aiming to attract a new group of devotees, it’s important to know.
Another frustrating element of the book is its lack of acknowledgment of the current global financial crisis. Sure, devoting a chapter to “surviving in the downturn” or “launching in the downturn” might quickly date this publication, but it seems absurd not to even address how a company can weather a financial storm.
Luxury has certainly fared better than mass-market retail over the last two years, but it has been bruised. While there are bright spots like Hermès and Louis Vuitton, other companies–particularly high-end jewelers–have struggled. Tiffany‘s sales decreased by 20% over the last quarter, and Manhattan “jeweler to the stars” Fred Leighton recently filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While the rich tend to keep on spending during a recession, many still cut back on extravagances–it’s not a notion special to this downturn.
That brings us to the book’s third major fault: its lack of balance. In certain chapters, the authors leave out important facts that would reduce the validity of their argument. For example, in a section that warns against using celebrities as spokespeople for luxury brands, the authors say that Louis Vuitton’s use of Mikhail Gorbachev in a 2007 luggage advertisement is absolved from that rule because he’s not a frivolous celebrity, he’s a serious world leader.
The authors fail to mention that, in that same series of luggage advertisements, Louis Vuitton also used Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. They also left out the fact that the brand regularly asks Hollywood stars–Christina Ricci, Scarlett Johansson and Uma Thurman, to name a few–to promote its handbags.
Kapferer and Bastien do have one thing right. They provide a few solid examples of long-successful luxury brands able to maintain their prestige–and relevance–over the years. For instance, the transformation of Krug in the 1950s from a high-quality–if small–champagne house with an excellent reputation to one of the world’s most in-demand brands provides plenty of lessons for aspiring luxury executives.
Here’s the story: While Krug was beloved in small circles around Europe, it was cheaply priced, even for the time (at about $19 a bottle). Competitor Moët & Chandon saw a chance to trump Krug by introducing Dom Pérignon, a champagne of similar quality but priced three times higher than Krug. Because of Dom Pérignon’s steep cost–and brilliant marketing by Moët & Chandon that included sending a large quantity of Dom to the Queen of England–the champagne became the most desirable in the world.
But Krug was able to fight back, say Kapferer and Bastien. “The brilliant stroke–or perhaps one should call it Krug’s strategic daring–lay not in producing an exceptional vintage … but [in hoisting] its prices … within 10 years it went from $19 to $100.”
For more book reviews, see: Jayanti Tamm’s Cartwheels in a Sari Simon Critchley’s Book of Dead Philosophers Lawrence Osborne’s Bangkok Days
At the same time, the company created a rare product at the top end called Clos du Mesnil, which takes 10 years to produce. Today, a bottle of Clos du Mesnil costs at least $1,000, depending on the year it was created.
More than anything, what examples like Krug prove is that marketing is about giving the customer what they want before they know that they want it. Every good marketer and advertiser should do this–it’s not exclusive to the luxury industry. So though the authors profess that one must “break the rules of marketing,” they’re in fact hewing to a tried and true rule.
A more useful book would focus on how to build a solid foundation in an industry where reputation is based greatly upon age and responsibility rather than novelty. Customers trust that Hermès’ Birkin bag, priced at $5,000 or more, is the best handbag in the world in terms of both style and quality. Fendi’s Baguette clutch, on the other hand, is beloved for its trendy colors and extreme metallic and patent finishes. While the Fendi is still expensive–priced between $450 and $2,000, depending on the material–it can be replaced next year. The Hermès in irreplaceable, and that’s what makes it a luxury.
It’s a simple idea that the authors failed to convey. Instead of instruction, The Luxury Strategy offers a weak argument that doesn’t teach us anything new. If you’re daring enough to enter the luxury sector as an independent entrepreneur, you’re probably already too innovative to get anything out of this book.
Lauren Sherman is a reporter at Forbes.
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Jean-Noel Kapferer and Vincent Bastien's ''The Luxury Strategy.''
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The story behind the 'evil' and 'dangerous' Annabelle doll
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The story behind the 'evil' and 'dangerous' Annabelle doll
Lorraine Warren with the 'Annabelle' doll
Lorraine and Ed Warren with the 'Annabelle' doll
Vistors at the Occult Museum in Monroe, Conn.
Relics on display at the Occult Museum in Monroe, Conn.
Stars Tony Amendola, Annabelle Wallis and Ward Horton in the film version of 'Annabelle'
'Annabelle' stars Annabelle Wallis and Ward Horton
'Annabelle' star Annabelle Wallis with the film version of the doll.
Annabelle, the spooky doll from the films 'The Conjuring' and 'Annabelle,' 'lives' in Monroe, Conn. at the
, which is curated by the Warren family. Lorraine Warren and her late husband, Ed, have investigated hauntings for decades. They have probed some of the world's most notorious haunted sites including the New York murder scene depicted in the iconic 1979 'Amityville Horror' film. Warren, who is a devout Catholic, told AOL.com she would never go back to the Amityville home, which she calls "the worst [she's] ever been involved with."
At 87 years old, Lorraine is still going strong with her son-in-law Tony Spera by her side. Tony helps Lorraine run the museum, and visitors from all over the country come to see the supernatural relics the Warrens have collected over the last 60 years.
The sweet-looking Raggedy Ann doll with big button eyes persists as the main attraction. Legend has it that the doll is 'fine' unless it is challenged -- and that's when she unleashes her wrath.
Some accounts say that car accidents and even physical attacks have been traced back to encounters with Annabelle. The doll has been stored in a wood and glass case since 1979 because there were too many 'near miss' incidents while it was displayed at the museum without protection around it.
Spera says that a Catholic priest lives on the grounds and blesses the doll daily to counteract its purported evil forces. 'The prayers act as a barrier to the evil within,' he explained to AOL.com in an interview. 'In the case of the Annabelle doll, certain prayers are recited, which act to bind the evil. Much like an electric dog fence, where the dog only goes so far then stops, the prayers work in much the same way. The evil can only go so far, then is stopped. Annabelle is a dangerous doll.'
Spera went on to recall one spooky incident that stands out in his memory.
"I will never forget the day when Annabelle moved inside glass and wooden enclosure,' he said. 'At one event, a woman took several pictures of the doll. In the first photo, Annabelle's hands were touching each other. A few moments later, she took a second photo -- this time her hands were separated -- about one-and-a-half to two inches apart!'
Moviegoers were first introduced to 'Annabelle' in the blockbuster movie 'The Conjuring' back in 2013, and earlier this month, New Line Cinemas released
where viewers learned a little more about about the doll's dark past.
In the film, John Form gives his expectant wife, Mia, a vintage doll dressed in a wedding gown. One night, the couple become the victims of a horrific crime, and the frightening legacy of Annabelle begins to take shape.
Lead actor Ward Horton approached his role in the new thriller 'Annabelle' like his other roles in 'Law and Order', 'I Hate Valentine's Day' and 'The Mighty Macs' -- that is, until something spine-tingling happened when he started shooting the film.' Horton explained: "When I opened my script for the first time, a medicine cabinet fell off the wall." It happened not once, but twice.
Those weren't the only strange things that happened on the movie set. When actor Christopher Shaw walked onto the set for his first day of filming and saw the demon for the very first time a light fixture fell onto his head, knocking him to the ground, Horton revealed.
, 'Annabelle' director John Leonetti recounted the first time he visited the apartment that was going to be used in the movie. The apartment, formerly owned by Clark Gable and Ronald Reagan, has sat vacant for 15 years.
The first night he walked in with members of the crew, he told the interviewer, there was a bright full moon shining through the window. The glow of the moon off-set what appeared to be tracks of three fingers that had been dragged thru the dust on the window. Coincidentally, the doll in the movie only had three fingers.
'It was all kinda creepy,' Leonetti admitted.
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%Slideshow-238096% By NANCY LYNCH Annabelle, the spooky doll from the films 'The Conjuring' and 'Annabelle,' 'lives' in Monroe, Conn. at the Occult Museum, which i
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Miley Cyrus -- Does This Make My Ass Look Good?
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' ass flipped a metaphorical middle finger to the world this weekend ... 'cause her cheeks were on full display despite the post-VMA backlash against it.
Miley flashed her rear-end to the crowd, repeatedly, during her
performance in Las Vegas ... proving she just doesn't care about all the people who said her ass was flat during that
To be honest ... the butt does look fuller, but still
Just for good measure ... Miley also served up a heaping dose of camel toe.
Miley's crotch don't give a f**k.
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Miley Cyrus' ass flipped a metaphorical middle finger to the world this weekend ... 'cause her cheeks were on full display despite the post-VMA backlash…
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Who is Axel Springer?
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If you’ve been following any of the recent funding and acquisition news in the media industry, one name keeps popping up in almost every story: Axel Springer. The company just finished buying Business Insider—a company it already owned a small stake in—for $343 million, tried and failed to buy the Financial Times in July for $1 billion, and has invested in half a dozen media startups, including New York-based Thrillist.
Springer may be a relative newcomer to the U.S. market, but it is a well-known player in the European media industry. Based in Berlin, it is a giant in the German media business, with leading newspaper and magazine titles that include Bild and Die Welt, and annual revenues of about 3 billion Euros, or $3.2 billion.
The company was founded in 1946 by Axel Springer and his father Hinrich and initially published a single monthly magazine about books. Other magazines followed, and then the daily tabloid newspaper Bild, which was modelled on the British tabloid The Daily Mirror. The company grew through acquisitions, and is now controlled by Springer’s widow Friede, who owns a majority of the shares.
The company’s aggressive moves into U.S. media are part of an ambitious growth strategy designed by Mathias Dopfner, who has been Springer’s CEO since 2002. There are two main prongs to the strategy, which is being powered by the cash flow from the company’s traditional media assets: 1.) Expand further into digital content, and 2.) Expand further into English-speaking markets like the U.S. and Britain.
One of the first major signs of this strategy at work was the takeover bid for the Financial Times, one of the most highly-respected business publications on the planet. The magazine was widely believed not to be for sale, but the new CEO of owner Pearson PLC had made public statements that suggested he might be interested in a deal, and so Axel Springer pounced, with a $1 billion offer.
It looked like a done deal, to the point where the Financial Times itself reported that the acquisition was going ahead. But at the last minute, Japanese financial giant Nikkei made a counter-offer, and Pearson accepted it. That wasn’t Springer’s first attempt to buy a financial publication, however: The German company also made a bid for Forbes when it went up for sale in 2014.
After losing the FT bid, Springer quickly pivoted and made an offer to acquire a controlling stake in Business Insider, the upstart business-news site co-founded by former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget. Springer already owned a 9% stake in the company, after investing in January as part of a funding round, and made an offer that Business Insider couldn’t refuse for the remainder of the company. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos retains a 3% stake he acquired via an earlier round.)
In a tangible sign of his determination to buy the news startup, the purchase price for Business Insider valued the entire company at close to $500 million, or more than twice what it was valued at when Springer first invested in the company nine months earlier.
“This really is a pivotal point in the changing of the media landscape,” Dopfner said on the conference call announcing the Business Insider deal, referencing the billion-dollar valuations for companies like Vice, Vox and BuzzFeed. “New digital media companies are being built and we definitely want to be a player. With Business Insider we have laid the foundation to achieve that.”
The acquisition price is more than six times the startup’s estimated revenues for 2016. That’s not far out of line with other recent investments in the media sector—including NBC Universal’s $200-million investment in both Vox and BuzzFeed—but not exactly cheap either. On the day the news was announced, Axel Springer’s share price took a hit, although it’s difficult to say whether that was due to skepticism about its expansion strategy or overall weakness in European stocks.
Over the past year or so, Springer has been building up what amounts to a hedge fund portfolio made up of stakes in media startups, primarily based in New York. It now owns small amounts of half a dozen companies, including: Ozy Media (founded by former MSNBC news anchor Carlos Watson), Mic (co-founded by Chris Altchek and Jake Horowitz) and NowThis News (one of a stable of companies funded by Lerer Ventures). Most are aimed at a millennial news audience.
Springer is also a 50% shareholder in Politico Europe, the European arm of the U.S. political-news startup founded by former Washington Post staffers Jim VandeHei and John Harris. That partnership fulfils both of Springer’s requirements — it is an English-speaking company, and it is almost 100% digital (although it does publish print versions of its topic-focused newsletters for certain markets).
Although part of Springer’s strategy is to become more digital, it should be noted that the company is already much farther along that road than many of its competitors, either in Europe or the U.S. In 2012, Springer created a digital classified business in partnership with the private equity fund General Atlantic, and expanded it by acquiring a job-listing site called TotalJobs from Reed Elsevier. More than 70% of the company’s cash flow now comes from digital businesses.
Springer has also been trying to build its own digital businesses in-house as well: It recently partnered with Samsung to launch a curated-news product called Upday that aggregates news from a variety of sources for users of Samsung phones. At the same time, Dopfner has been a vocal critic of Google’s dominance in search and search-related advertising, writing an “open letter” to chairman Eric Schmidt about his concerns that the company has too much power online.
Funds from Springer’s growing digital base, and the continuing cash flow from newspapers and magazines, have provided most of the fuel for Dopfner’s acquisition and investment strategy—along with the money it raised in 2013 by selling its regional newspapers and many of its smaller magazines to another German media group for close to $1 billion. The only question is where it will strike next.
You can follow Mathew Ingram on Twitter at @mathewi, and read all of his posts here or via his RSS feed. And please subscribe to Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the business of technology.
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The company that just bought Business Insider and failed to buy the Financial Times has invested in half a dozen media startups.
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http://fortune.com/2016/04/08/bill-clinton-protest-apology/
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Bill Clinton 'Almost' Wants to Apologize to Black Lives Matter Demo
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Bill Clinton has landed himself in some serious hot water in the past 24 hours after a contentious exchange with Black Lives Matter protestors in Philadelphia, where he seemed to defend his administration’s 1994 crime bill and his wife Hillary Clinton’s use of the term “superpredator” to describe some black youth during the 90s — something Hillary herself has said was a mistake.
Today, Bill Clinton may have dug his hole even deeper by saying that he “almost want[s] to apologize” for the exchange, according to CNN. He maintained that he supports the idea of protest “but it bothers me now when that happens.” He specifically said his age may contribute to that feeling.
This likely won’t appease the progressive voters and protesters who more than likely wanted a full and real apology from Bill Clinton. This latest event has renewed concerns that, much like in 2008, Bill could end up being a drag on Hillary’s campaign, has both he and commentators focus more on his administration than on the current issues.
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No word on if they "almost" accepted.
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http://fortune.com/2016/06/13/uber-settlement-fees/
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Lawyer for Uber Drivers Slashes Fees in $100 Million Settlement
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Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who is representing approximately 350,000 Uber drivers in California and Massachusetts, told a court she is cutting her proposed fees by $10 million as part of an arrangement to settle lawsuits that Uber misclassified the drivers as contractors not drivers.
The new figure appears in a terse document filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco. It comes six weeks after Uber and the drivers announced the controversial settlement, which could pay see the company pay up to $100 million and modify some of its policies.
Even though the proposed Uber deal only covers drivers in two states, it is being closely watched by many because it could serve as a template not only for Uber, but for other so-called “gig economy” companies that are also facing lawsuits over how they classify workers.
Despite the possible $100 million payout, the settlement ran into trouble almost immediately. Some drivers objected to both the settlement’s terms and its proposed 25% commission for Liss-Riordan and other lawyers. Furthermore, in May, one plaintiff told the court that “the deal is not in my interest or in the interest of any Uber driver.”
The new fee arrangement, which appears designed to mollify some of those objections, would increase the pot of money available to Uber drivers if the deal is approved.
Sign up for Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter
The document only explains the fee reduction by saying it would “provide additional benefits to the class,” but Liss-Riordan provided further context to a legal news site this weekend.
“I am offended by the allegations that I settled the case for the fees,” Liss-Riordan told The Recorder. “As an experienced and dedicated workers rights advocate for nearly 20 years, I reached an agreement that I believe is in the best interests of the class.”
She added that she is also calling on Uber to increase the base value of the settlement by $10 million. The current arrangement calls on Uber to pay a total of $84 million and $100 million in the event Uber has an IPO in the near future—an unlikely event given CEO Travis Kalanik recently said an IPO would come “as late as humanly possibly.”
For most drivers, the new fee arrangement would mean a modest increase in the payout they receive. Such a payout, in most cases, would likely be around $200.
For Uber, the proposed settlement would amount to a victory since it classifies the drivers as contractors. The designation is good for drivers, according to the company, because it affords them flexibility. But critics counter that it is a legal device arranged to help Uber avoid paying certain benefits.
The case remains before U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, who must decide whether to approve or reject the settlement.
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Will this stop the criticism?
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http://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/09/archives/rose-h-talbert.html
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The New York Times
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Rose Hershfield Talbert, a popular variety entertainer in the nineteen‐twenties and thirties, died Friday at St. Clare's Hospital. She was 91 years old and lived at 300 West 55th Street.
Mrs. Talbert, a sister of the late Harry Hershfield, the humorist, leaves her husband, Robert Talbert, a former vocalist; a son, Jules Alberti, and three sisters, Ethel Hershfield, Ruth Williams and Helen Shapiro.
We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.
A version of this archives appears in print on April 9, 1975, on page 46 of the New York edition with the headline: ROSE H. TALBERT. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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Talbert, Rose Hershfield (Mrs): Dies at age of 91 (S)
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http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/harry-potter-cursed-child-halt-live-owls-article-1.2669204
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‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ to halt use of live owls
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The London stage production of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” has abandoned its use of the wizened birds after an opening night mishap involving an owl that went cuckoo and flew out over the audience.
Producers didn’t explain why the live birds were grounded, assuring only that they were “expertly cared for by a team of certified trainers.”
A sign posted in the Palace Theatre on Thursday informed audience members that the feathered creatures in the play are now puppets.
The play began a sold-out run of previews on Tuesday before its July 30 opening. The live owl was meant to evoke the original wizard world of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series, where the magical birds deliver packages and letters.
At least one Broadway veteran saw the birdy bedlam coming all the way from Hogwarts.
“Birds are much trickier to work with than dogs,” said Bill Berloni, an animal trainer on the Great White Way.
And, naturally, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was crowing.
“Owls are not actors and should never be forced to perform,” the group chirped in a statement.
“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” picks up 19 years after the seventh and final book’s conclusion and follows the title character’s troubled relationship with his son.
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Owl be damned.
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20 Things You Should Throw Away for Better Health
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When we talk about the steps you need to take to get healthier, they often involve buying new things: workout clothes, fitness equipment, ingredients for healthy recipes, and the list goes on. But becoming the healthiest version of yourself also means throwing away the stuff that’s holding you back—and we don’t only mean junk food. Get your recycling or garbage can ready!
Go through your collection of food-storage containers and toss anything made of clear, rigid plastic, and stamped with a 7 or “pc” (stands for polycarbonate). “These are the types of containers that maycontain BPA,” says Sonya Lunder, MPH, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, who also advises tossing warped or cracked containers. While manufacturers have take BPA out of many of the newer polycarbonate containers, old ones still probably have it. And multiple trips through the dishwasher can up leaching of the chemical. Lunder also cautions against heating any type of plastic in the microwave because of chemical-leaching concerns. “Glass is safer in general,” she says.
Though some companies have recently announced they’re phasing out phthalates, which are used to help fragrance linger longer, many air fresheners (solids, sprays, and plug-ins) still contain this type of chemical, which in large doses may have harmful effects on reproduction or development. “These products are simply chemical perfumes that you put in the air,” says Lunder, who argues that it’s much healthier to take care of the root cause of a smell than mask it with chemicals.
Antibacterial soap is no more effective at killing bacteria than the regular stuff—and they may not be safe, according to a 2014 FDA report. Triclosan, the active ingredient in antibacterial cleansers, has been shown to alter hormone regulation in animals, and there’s also concern that the chemical may contribute to antibiotic resistance.
Your stash of diet soda
If you haven’t already, you may want to reconsider your diet soda habit—especially if you’re trying to lose weight. A much-buzzed-about study published in the journal Nature found that non-caloric sweeteners such as saccharin (Sweet-n-Low), sucralose (Splenda), and aspartame (Equal) may mess with the gut bacteria that play a key role in healthy metabolism. Researchers found a link between these sweeteners, altered gut microbes, glucose intolerance and metabolic syndrome (both precursors to Type 2 diabetes) in mice and humans.
Most running shoes should be replaced every 300 to 400 miles, says Jason Karp, MD, exercise physiologist and author of Running for Women. For a runner who logs 30 miles a week, that’s about every three months. When shoes wear down, they lose their cushioning and are less capable of absorbing the impact of your foot landing with each step, so more force is transmitted to muscles, bones, and tendons, putting you at risk for injuries, he explains. If you’re not a runner, replace them about every six months, or as soon as you notice that the tread is looking worn out.
If you’re brushing in the morning and the evening like you’re supposed to, then your toothbrush bristles are probably becoming frayed and worn faster than you realize. “In my experience, bristles start to fray after about two months of use, so I recommend my patients replace their brushes every three months,” says American Dental Association spokesperson Ruchi Sahota, who is a practicing dentist in California. Worn-out brushes are less effective at cleaning teeth and fighting off decay.
Health.com: 27 Mistakes Healthy People Make
“In the end, we are what we think about, and what we think about is heavily influenced by what we keep around us,” says motivational speaker and life coach Gail Blanke, author of Throw Out Fifty Things. She calls the things that neither serve a specific purpose nor exist to make you feel good “life plaque”: “The more life plaque we pile around ourselves, the less we can focus on what we really care about,” she explains. Not sure where to start? Toss things that annoy you every time you see them, like socks that have lost their match, or your overflowing kitchen junk drawer. No matter what you decide to throw out (or donate), your goal is to whittle the physical objects down to only items that help you feel energized and accomplish your goals.
Clothes you don’t wear anymore
Take a peek in your closet. How many items have you not worn within the last year? Many people who’ve lost weight keep the bigger sizes around in case they regain it, while others hold onto the size 2 jeans they wore in high school, thinking maybe if they diet they’ll fit again. In either case, seeing these items every day can bring on anxiety. That’s not how anyone wants to feel when getting ready.
Leftovers lingering in the fridge
When it comes to highly perishable food that contains animal ingredients, the rule of thumb is to eat, toss, or freeze after three days, says Michael P. Doyle, PhD, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. “Listeria is linked to scary things like meningitis, miscarriages, and even death,” he says. “It can grow to millions at refrigerator temperatures in under a week.”
Liquid makeup, including mascara, can harbor a lot of germs, says Thomas Steinemann, MD, an American Academy of Ophthalmology spokesperson who practices in Ohio. That’s why he recommends throwing tubes away two to three months after opening. “Each time you use mascara, you are brushing it and any germs onto your lashes,” he says. “You’re also contaminating the brush with even more bacteria present on your skin or eyelashes, then plunging it into a moist room-temperature environment, which encourages bacterial growth.” One of the primary functions of eyelashes is to keep debris and germs from entering your eye, so it’s important to keep the makeup you put on them as germ-free as possible, he adds.
“Using a dirty lens case is one of the primary risk factors for getting eye infections,” says Dr. Steinemann, who recommends replacing you lens case at least every three months, as well as cleaning, air-drying facedown, and using fresh solution daily. “Even if you care for your lens case fastidiously, a grimy biofilm builds up on the surface that’s a magnet for dirt and germs,” he explains. “If you don’t change it out for a new one, you’re putting yourself at risk for a potentially serious eye infection like a corneal ulcer that can become infected and—even when healed—result in a scar that could affect your vision,” he adds. Don’t mess with your eyes, people!
Spices that have been hanging out in your cabinets for years probably won’t make you sick—but they won’t add any flavor to your food, which is key when you’re trying to cook healthy meals that don’t go overboard on fat or calories. Fresh spices can mean the difference between bland meals that makes you consider giving up on your goals and ordering delivery, and amazingly flavorful food that’s good for you and satisfying.
Read more: 20 Quick and Easy Ways to Get Healthier Fast
Anything that’s used around your mouth collects a lot of bacteria quickly, and the longer the bacteria sits in a moist tube, the more it grows. This increases your chance of infection if it gets into a cut or crack on the delicate skin of your lips. For this reason, experts recommend that you throw out lip gloss or other lip makeup no more than six months after you open it and begin using it, or by the expiration date, whichever is sooner.
If you have an air purifier at home, you get a gold star. “HEPA filtered air cleaning devices—the most efficient kind—are important because according to the EPA, indoor air quality is 25 to 100 times worse than outdoors,” says Philip Tierno, PhD, a microbiologist with New York University. In fact, the average 1,500 square foot house can accumulate 40 pounds of dust (40,000 dust mites per ounce). “One in five Americans suffer from allergies or asthma, which can be exacerbated by dust, mold, and bacteria in the air so a good filter system goes a long way,” he adds. Just don’t forget to replace the filter every so often or you could actually be growing mold and bacteria, and blowing contaminants back into your air. How often depends on what kind you have, so check with your manufacturer and use common sense. One telltale sign it needs to be tossed is a musty smell.
When’s the last time you went bra shopping? The elastic in bras can get stretched out over time (the washing machine speeds up this process) which means less support for your girls. “Replacing a bra whenever it no longer lends comfort and support will help reduce back pain in heavier women, and can slow the natural process of aging in breast tissue,” says breast specialist Kristi Funk, MD. (That “natural process of aging” is sagging.)
Studies show the kitchen sponge is the germiest thing in the average American household, says Tierno. While some experts recommend microwaving sponges daily to zap bacteria, Doyle recommends skipping them completely: “When you use a sponge to clean meat juices, which can contain harmful microbes like salmonella, and it stays moist at room temperature, they grow quickly and studies show even the dishwasher doesn’t kill them.” He advises using a washcloth to clean dishes instead, grabbing a clean one every few days, and throwing the dirty ones in with your laundry. “Because it’s thinner, a washcloth dries quicker than a sponge between washes, which helps significantly slow bacterial growth,” he explains.
Slicing and dicing on plastic cutting boards scores the surface (those lines you begin seeing after the first few times you use one). Once bacteria get into these tiny grooves and begin to grow, they can be very difficult to get rid of, says Doyle. He recommends switching to wooden cutting boards because wood contains resins that are naturally antimicrobial. Translation: when you score a wooden cutting board and bacteria seeps in, it dies instead of thrives.
You don’t need to toss your iPhone or Android out completely (phew!), but you should definitely unplug from time to time. Mounting research indicates that information overload—what happens when you use smart devices constantly—is linked to depression and anxiety. Recent studies suggest that this is particularly true for people who are overly attached to their smartphones and tablets, and for those who use multiple devices at once (which experts call media multitasking). Power down and stow your devices in a drawer at least a few times per week to give your brain a break‚ ideally on a set schedule (for example, weekdays after 9 p.m. or weekend mornings before noon).
Health.com: 12 Strange-But-True Health Tricks
Global studies show that the average person sits 7.7 hours a day, and some estimate people sit up to 15 hours a day, says Robert Emery, professor of occupational health at the University of Texas School of Public Health. Excessive sitting impacts the body’s metabolic system, and can lead to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, and depression. But it’s not as simple as putting in more time at the gym, which may not even reverse “sitting disease,” adds Emery. The American Medical Association recommends switching to a standing desk for work as an excellent way to combat the health issues associated with too much sitting.
This article originally appeared on Health.com
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Ready the recycling bin
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http://fortune.com/2015/10/23/tesla-autopilot-goes-global/
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Elon Musk: Tesla's autopilot is going global
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Tesla owners all over the world—except Japan—can now let their cars steer for them on the highway.
Earlier this month, Tesla began pushing out its semi-autonomous driving feature known as autopilot via over-the-air software updates. Overnight, Model S vehicles with an enabled technology package were able to steer within a lane and change lanes with the simple tap of a turn signal, and manage speed by using active, traffic-aware cruise control.
During the reveal, CEO Elon Musk told reporters the latest software upgrade 7.0, which includes several of Tesla’s autopilot features, would first be pushed out in the U.S. Customers in Europe and Asia were expected to follow shortly after. But on Oct. 18 Musk tweeted, “Autopilot release to Europe and Asia pending regulatory approval. Hopefully get the ok in the next few weeks.”
The company got what it needed five days later. In a tweet Friday, Musk announced the company had received regulatory approvals. The company is still working with the Japanese government to receive approval there.
Regulatory approvals received, so Autopilot rolling out to all countries! (Excluding Japan, which is still under review)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 23, 2015
Autopilot uses computing, software, mapping data, and sensors to parallel park, steer, and change lanes on highways. The feature is built into all Model S and Model X cars produced in the past year. Customers can access autopilot with a one-time $2,500 fee. Tesla customers who bought a technology package already have access to the autopilot features.
Tesla TSLA has shipped 60,000 cars with the autonomous capability, Musk said at the autopilot reveal in October. More advanced self-driving features are not yet available. But they’re one their way, Musk said in a later tweet Friday.
Autopilot 1.01 coming soon: curve speed adaption, controller smoothness, better lane holding on poor roads, improved fleet learning!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 23, 2015
Fortune writer Katie Fehrenbacher tested out the steering and lane change autopilot capabilities on the highway near Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. Check out the video documenting her experience here.
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The all-electric car company is still working on receiving regulatory approval for its semi-autonomous driving feature in Japan.
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http://fortune.com/2015/08/03/women-office-freezing-cold/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160617035747id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/08/03/women-office-freezing-cold/
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Science Explains Why Women Are Cold at Work
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Women who are always freezing at work finally know who to blame: Men.
In a new report published Monday in Nature, researchers found that most office building temperatures are set using a decades-old formula for a “thermal comfort model” that takes into account factors like air temperature, air speed, and clothing insulation. That’s converted into a seven-point scale and compared to the Predicted Percentage Dissatisfied, which gauges how many people are likely to feel uncomfortably cool or warm.
The problem is that one variable in that formula is inherently sexist. Turns out that the resting metabolic rate, or the measure of how fast we generate heat, that’s used in the calculation is based on a 40-year-old man weighing about 154 pounds. But women, who make up half of today’s workforce, typically have slower metabolic rates because they’re on average smaller and have more body fat. Thus, the study says the current “thermal comfort model” may overestimate women’s resting heat production by up to 35%.
Women’s physiology and wardrobe selection are also factors. Joost van Hoof, a building physicist at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, was not involved in the study, but provided this memorable commentary to The New York Times:
“Many men, they wear suits and ties, and women tend to dress sometimes with cleavage. The cleavage is closer to the core of the body, so the temperature difference between the air temperature and the body temperature there is higher when it’s cold. I wouldn’t overestimate the effect of cleavage, but it’s there.”
What’s there to do about the problem? The study offers this solution: change the temperature setting formula. Accounting for women’s metabolic rates and body tissue insulation, female workers might prefer a 75 degree Fahrenheit office, the Times says. Typical office temperatures now hover around 70 degrees.
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Turns out workplace thermostats are kinda sexist
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http://www.aol.com/article/2015/04/30/designer-kitchen-pennies-dollar/21174616/
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Score a Designer Kitchen for Pennies on the Dollar
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Thrifty home-design mavens have been rescuing and re-using vintage home materials for some time. And now the trend is taking a decidedly upscale turn. "The re-use movement is increasingly harvesting newer, more high-end material,"
Case in point: Savvy shoppers are buying whole kitchens second-hand as wealthy homeowners tear out their upscale kitchens and replace them with newer, fancier versions. The savings for thrifty buyers can be so great that in some cases it pays to buy and move the purchases across the country.
in Seattle, talked with KOMO after receiving "granite counters, full pantry and built-in stainless appliances that included a bread warmer" from a homeowner who was remodeling. Petrauska said: "I would venture to say something like that new would be around $20,000. I think it sold for $3,300."
Debbie and Steve Zografos, told KOMO that they spent $20,000, including packing and shipping it from Connecticut, on a used custom kitchen that they estimate was worth $80,000 to $100,000 new. The package included "Dacor double ovens and six-burner range, a Sub-Zero refrigerator-freezer, stainless steel sinks and faucets, a huge island, thousands of dollars' worth of drawer pulls and walls of custom cabinetry designed by well-known Canadian cabinet manufacturer Andre Julien."
There are numerous advantages to using salvaged and vintage home materials:
, the source of the Zografoses' reclaimed kitchen, calls itself "North America's premier luxury recycler for kitchens, high-end renovation items, showroom displays, and new-in-box overstocks." It has a 43,000-square-foot showroom in Fairfield, New Jersey. CEO Steve Feldman founded Green Demolitions in 2005.
, he says: "It's a black or white scenario. It's either getting thrown out and wasted, or it's being recycled, repurposed and turned into cash."
The Green Demolitions video also features actress Edie Falco ("The Sopranos"), who donated her kitchen through an affiliated nonprofit company,
. Donors can claim tax deductions and direct proceeds from the sale of their gifts to a favorite charity. Falco selected The Sanctuary for Animals, a New York nonprofit, to benefit from the sale of her kitchen.
a page of its site to its success stories.
KOMO describes Green Demolitions kitchen deals: "The typical midrange luxury kitchen they take in runs about $100,000 new. The kitchens are priced based on condition and style and will sell second-hand for anywhere from $40,000 down to $10,000."
visited the big showroom and found a kitchen selling for $21,000. Valued originally around $75,000, it had blue pearl granite countertops, "a Thermador stainless steel double oven, a 48-inch Viking range with hood, a 48-inch Sub-Zero refrigerator, and cherry cabinets and island."
Tempting as these bargains are, fitting a recycled kitchen into your existing home isn't necessarily a piece of cake. In its FAQ, Green Demolitions says: "In most kitchens the cabinets are modular and can be rearranged to fit into a different space. As long as you have roughly enough cabinets and enough ceiling height, a kitchen from one home can be retrofitted into numerous different homes." Nevertheless, there are issues to consider. Some guidance:
As the desire to recycle grows among affluent homeowners, so do the number of sources for higher-end salvaged goods. Here are some sources and ideas:
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Enterprising homeowners are buying $100,000 kitchens secondhand for a fraction of their original prices. Here's how it works.
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http://fortune.com/2016/04/11/cannabis-social-network-massroots-ipo/
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Cannabis Social Network MassRoots Again Gasps For IPO
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MassRoots, a social network for cannabis users, has filed plans for a second time to launch an initial public offering on the Nasdaq in a bid to become the first in the space to go public.
The cannabis startup, which currently trades in over-the-counter markets, is aiming to list shares on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol MSRT. MassRoots is a network that connects cannabis users to share their experiences, follow their favorite dispensaries, and stay informed about legalization updates. It has a community of about 775,000 users.
If the IPO were to successfully launch, MassRoots says it would use proceeds to accelerate user growth, develop new features for the company’s mobile app, expand the services of the company’s business, and use funds for working capital.
Interestingly, it isn’t the first time MassRoots has aimed to go public to become one of the first public companies with ties to the cannabis community. (So far, only biotech stocks in the space have launched an IPO). MassRoots filed with the Nasdaq last summer to go public, but that effort wasn’t successful as it didn’t have a bank underwriter. As Fortune has reported, banks have been leery about their involvement with the marijuana industry.
But this time, MassRoots has banking support. The IPO is being underwritten by New York-based investment banking firm Chardan Capital Markets.
The latest filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission also revealed some new financial details for MassRoots. The firm reported $213,963 in revenue for 2015 on a net loss of $8.5 million, compared to the prior year’s $9,030 in revenue on a net loss of $2.4 million.
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It's the second try to take the firm public on the Nasdaq.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/06/nyregion/neglect-found-in-residences-for-disabled.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160617073505id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1990/08/06/nyregion/neglect-found-in-residences-for-disabled.html?
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Neglect Found in Residences for Disabled
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Thousands of mentally ill patients and other people unable to care for themselves are being assigned by New York State authorities to live in unsanitary, dilapidated and poorly supervised adult group homes or halfway houses, inspections by a state monitoring agency have found.
Neglect in some of the institutions is so severe that many residents resemble homeless street people, wandering ill kempt and ill fed, despite Federal and state subsidies of over $9,000 a year for each resident, the Commission on Quality of Care for the Mentally Disabled found. The commission investigates complaints involving the mentally ill.
The commission's findings were compiled from its surprise inspections at 47 of the 449 adult homes, which house 25,000 former mental patients or indigent elderly people. Inspectors said they uncovered serious problems at 28 homes, including fire and safety hazards in 20.
''We found conditions in some homes so wretched that they looked like the old back wards of mental hospitals of a generation ago,'' Clarence J. Sundram, the commission chairman, said in an interview.
But another state official, Judith Berek, a deputy commissioner in the Social Services Department, which oversees the homes, disputed the commission's findings.
''Over all, many of the homes serving the mentally ill do need improvement,'' said Ms. Berek. ''But I don't think in most instances people are being seriously neglected or abused.''
About 9,000 patients who have been discharged from state mental hospitals and 16,000 other people too old or too frail to care for themselves live in the 449 adult homes. The homes, also known as halfway houses, will receive about $150 million in Federal and state subsidies this year.
Owners and administrators of homes classifed as substandard described the commission's findings as biased and exaggerated. They attributed housing defects and material shortages partly to destruction and vandalism caused by a recent increase in younger, violence-prone residents. The homes are privately run and most patients are assigned by the state or a local authority.
''We can't be a five-star hotel on $24 a day,'' said Peter Henigman, proprietor of the Dawn View Home for Adults in Hauppauge, L.I.
Susan Peerless, executive director of the Empire State Association of Adult Homes, a lobbying and trade association, also complained about the amount of money provided by the state. ''The state does not want to increase funding,'' she said, ''and it does not want to close them, because where would you put 9,200 mental dischargees?''
The commission's inspections were conducted from September 1989 to February 1990. The inspection reports were obtained by The New York Times under the state's Freedom of Information law.
The state requires the halfway houses to provide a room, three meals a day and limited medical supervision. They are not nursing homes, and residents must not be bedridden. The homes are expected to help mentally ill residents become self-sufficient, although mental health authorities say that few return to independent living.
In the last 25 years, similar halfway house systems have been adopted in many other states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California, as a method of treating mentally ill outpatients and to cut public hospitalization bills. The number of patients in New York mental hospitals decreased from 75,000 in 1965 to 15,000 now.
The commission, as part of a study requested by the State Legislature, chose 47 houses in which at least 25 percent of the residents were mentally ill.
Larger Homes 'Among the Worst'
Fourteen of the homes were classifed as ''poor,'' with serious or significant problems in virtually every major category, including safety, health care, nutrition and housekeeping. Another 14, each having two or more serious problems, were classified as needing improvement. Only 19 were rated ''good.''
Larger homes - those with 150 or more residents - and those in New York City and its suburbs ''tended to be among the worst,'' Mr. Sundram said.
Of those classified as poor, six were in the city, three on Long Island, three in the northern suburbs and two upstate.
Mr. Sundram said the findings showed the ''historic weakness'' of inspections by the Social Services Department and the ineffectiveness of fines imposed by the department, usually $50 a day for infractions.
''The owners see the fines as just a normal cost of doing business,'' said Mr. Sundram, who has headed the commission since 1978.
An ombudsman agency, the commission investigates complaints of mistreatment of mentally ill patients. It has no enforcement powers.
Ms. Berek of the Social Services Department, insisted in an interview that inspections by her unit were ''tough,'' noting that in 1988 an adult home in Queens was fined $17,000 for violations.
State law requires the department to conduct an unannounced inspection of each home at least once a year with a follow-up review to ensure that violations have been corrected.
The department has the authority to impose fines of up to $1,000 a day for violations and can close homes for repeated offenses.
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LEAD: Thousands of mentally ill patients and other people unable to care for themselves are being assigned by New York State authorities to live in unsanitary, dilapidated and poorly supervised adult group homes or halfway houses, inspections by a state monitoring agency have found.
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http://time.com/3654475/tell-me-about-yourself-formula/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160617204825id_/http://time.com:80/3654475/tell-me-about-yourself-formula/
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A Simple Formula for Answering "Tell Me About Yourself"
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This post is in partnership with The Muse. The article below was originally published on The Muse.
“So, tell me about yourself.”
What seems like such a simple question can really make you sweat, especially in an interview. What, exactly, should you share—not just to build rapport, but to show that you’re the perfect fit for the job?
Fear not, job seekers: There’s a super-simple formula that will help you answer this question with ease. Watch this quick video as our CEO Kathryn Minshew gives a simple tip from our career expert Lily Zhang, then try it out for yourself!
So, the first question you’re probably going to get in an interview is, “Tell me about yourself.” Now, this is not an invitation to recite your entire life story or even to go bullet by bullet through your resume. Instead, it’s probably your first and best chance to pitch the hiring manager on why you’re the right one for the job.
A formula I really like to use is called the Present-Past-Future formula. So, first you start with the present—where you are right now. Then, segue into the past—a little bit about the experiences you’ve had and the skills you gained at the previous position. Finally, finish with the future—why you are really excited for this particular opportunity.
Let me give you an example:
If someone asked, “tell me about yourself,” you could say:
“Well, I’m currently an account executive at Smith, where I handle our top performing client. Before that, I worked at an agency where I was on three different major national healthcare brands. And while I really enjoyed the work that I did, I’d love the chance to dig in much deeper with one specific healthcare company, which is why I’m so excited about this opportunity with Metro Health Center.”
Remember throughout your answer to focus on the experiences and skills that are going to be most relevant for the hiring manager when they’re thinking about this particular position and this company. And ultimately, don’t be afraid to relax a little bit, tell stories and anecdotes—the hiring manager already has your resume, so they also want to know a little more about you.
Read next: How to Answer the 31 Most Common Interview Questions
Listen to the most important stories of the day.
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Try the Present-Past-Future formula
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http://time.com/3839984/lessons-baltimore-1968/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160617213636id_/http://time.com:80/3839984/lessons-baltimore-1968/
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What the City Can Learn from the Past
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In the 20 years that I have lived in Baltimore City, I have seen guns fired only twice; in each instance the targets were black men and the shooters were police. In one case the officer was trying to stop a group of men who had apparently stolen a car. They bailed out in front of my house, and as they were running away, the officer fired, but missed. In the second case the officer’s aim was better; an assailant held up a medical student on a bicycle, then ran through traffic right in front of our car. An off-duty cop saw the scuffle and fired. He turned out to be a 14-year-old with a BB gun. The boy lay in the street, shot in the stomach; my 12-year-old son and I waited until the police told us to move on. I called my district and set up an appointment with a detective. No one ever came to question me.
Those incidents came back to me this week when the death of Freddie Gray triggered days of peaceful protests that splintered into something uglier on Saturday, and anti-police violence erupted on Monday. But those weren’t the only moments from the past that seemed worth thinking about. The looting and arson led to comparisons to the unrest that followed the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—and, as an assistant professor of history at the University of Baltimore who has studied Baltimore in 1968, I can see a number of similarities. After several days of peaceful commemoration of Dr. King’s death, disenfranchised youth instigated disturbances in fifteen neighborhood commercial districts. Curfews were imposed, just as they were in Baltimore this week, and hundreds of citizens were eventually swept into custody. During both of the crises, members of the clergy of all faiths walked the streets in attempts to restore order.
But the real link between the two moments, 1968 and today, runs deeper than that. It’s not about the appearance of similarity, but rather the causes and effects.
As UB discovered in a community-based, multi-disciplinary examination of the riots 40 years later, the causes and consequences of urban unrest are complex and multifaceted. As part of our project, our diverse student body interviewed their friends and family, and we heard stories that illustrated deep systemic trends that led to generations of anger and frustration: practices in the private sector like residential covenants that forbade sales to black and Jewish buyers, federal policies like redlining that discouraged bank loans to poor and aging neighborhoods, urban renewal policies that used federal funds to build highways that cut neighborhoods off from the rest of Baltimore; limited job opportunities as Baltimore’s blue-collar jobs began to evaporate. All of those forces had been at work long before Dr. King’s assassination, and, as we see violence along the same streets almost five decades later, Baltimoreans still feel their effects today.
We also heard stories about businesses that were destroyed after families had poured years of effort and capital into them. In 1968 the Pats family lost its pharmacy on West North Avenue, just a few blocks from the CVS that burned this Monday evening. Their business was looted, then their entire block was burned, including their apartment. Their neighbors, who lost their jewelry store, had been relocated to Baltimore after surviving the Holocaust. Baltimore’s retail sector has still not recovered in many areas of the city. A number of neighborhoods have been declared food deserts, and no department store exists within the city limits. When a Target arrived at Mondawmin Mall and hired city residents, Baltimoreans welcomed it. But on Monday night we watched with dismay as looters ran out of Mondawmin, their arms full of merchandise.
In 1968, the governor of Maryland called out the National Guard, just as Governor Larry Hogan did on Monday night, and soon tanks patrolled the city streets. The unrest quieted, and by the end of the week the Orioles held opening day on schedule.
Here’s where the stories diverge. Maryland’s then-governor, Spiro Agnew, rode the wake of Baltimore’s disturbances right into the White House, using his tough-on-crime reputation to become Richard Nixon’s vice-presidential running mate. It is too simplistic to say that the policing approach Agnew advocated led directly to the kind of practices that killed Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. We cannot exclude from the list of causes Nixon’s War on Drugs, the crack epidemic of the 1980s and ‘90s, the growth of the prison-industrial complex, and the continuing hemorrhaging of blue-collar jobs from America’s aging industrial cities—but the reaction to the urban riots of the 1960s certainly started us down this path.
The similarities can stop. Knowledge of the aftermath of 1968 can help prevent its repetition. In the early 1970s law and order policing reinforced divisions around race, class, and geography in an attempt to lock up the problems instead of addressing them. We can learn from those mistakes. On Tuesday morning the NAACP announced that they would open a satellite office in Sandtown-Winchester, Freddie Gray’s neighborhood, to provide counsel to residents on a host of legal issues, including police misconduct. An external oversight board to monitor reports of police violence would serve as a powerful partner in this effort. Out on the streets on Tuesday morning, Baltimoreans worked together to clean up the debris from the night. I hope that as we work we will find a chance to tell each other our stories, and that this time we will listen.
Historians explain how the past informs the present
Elizabeth M. Nix is a professor of legal, ethical and historical studies at the University of Baltimore, and co-editor with Jessica Elfenbein and Thomas Hollowak of Baltimore ’68: Riots and Rebirth in An American City.
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How history can heal a harmed city
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2014/05/22/cold-july-tough-western-hampered-neo-noir-cliches/MmAI4BZnWOF4tiLQ97kWQP/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160617220217id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/movies/2014/05/22/cold-july-tough-western-hampered-neo-noir-cliches/MmAI4BZnWOF4tiLQ97kWQP/story.html
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‘Cold in July’ a tough western hampered by neo-noir clichés
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20160617220217
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“Cold in July” opens with an Everyman’s nightmare: It’s 3 a.m. and you’re woken by the sounds of an intruder in your living room. This being Texas, the hero, a mild-mannered small-town picture-framer named Rich Dane (Michael C. Hall), has a gun, but his hands shake as he loads the bullets, and the scene’s bloody climax is more a matter of shot nerves than self-defense.
“Sometimes the good guy wins,” drawls the sheriff (Nick Damici, who co-wrote the script).
Rich knows better: “My finger slipped.”
The dead robber was a known loser, survived only by a mean old daddy who’s just out of prison. When Ben Russell (Sam Shepard) looms up in the window of Rich’s car and starts asking about Rich’s wife (Vinessa Shaw) and kid (Brogan Hall), “Cold in July” looks like it’s headed down the road laid by “Cape Fear” and “Straw Dogs” — movies in which a civilized wimp discovers his inner savage under assault.
Not entirely, it turns out, and one of the interests of this film is trying to figure out where it’s headed as the plot twists from one oxbow to the next. You may be put in mind of HBO’s recent “True Detective” — the low-down Southern locations, the time period (here the mid-1980s), some truly horrible crimes, a general air of diseased moralism — but “Cold in July,” while stylishly done, isn’t close to that good.
Still, it’s fun to see Hall play a weenie with a mullet and a Steven Weed mustache, if only to be reminded that there’s (much) more to the actor than “Dexter.” Discovering that the man he killed may not be who the sheriff says, Rich gingerly investigates, like a choirboy peeping into a cathouse. All he wants to know is whom he shot. Unfortunately, that turns out to be one of the handful of questions “Cold in July” forgets to answer, whether through intentional omission or narrative ADHD.
The movie’s mostly about Rich’s pilgrim’s regress as he tries to solve the mystery with the help of the grizzled Ben and Jim Bob Luke, a yeehawing private eye played by Don Johnson with a cowboy hat, cherry-red convertible, and a jolt of energy the movie needs. The trail leads to some very bad men doing very bad things, and the question of calling 911 is never remotely on the menu. “Cold in July” isn’t troubled by the ethics of vigilantism — like I said, we’re in Texas — but only whether Rich will be man enough to saddle up. Beneath the neo-noir clichés is a tough little western trying to get out.
Directed and co-written by Jim Mickle and based on a novel by the maverick writer Joe R. Lansdale, “Cold in July” ultimately tries to do too much and ends up not doing quite enough — often entertainingly, not always believably. The movie isn’t a character study, although Hall gives subtle shadings to the earnest but inarticulate Rich. (Is his picture-framing shop a nod to “The American Friend” of novelist Patricia Highsmith and director Wim Wenders?) It’s richer and more atmospheric than a B-movie shoot-’em-up, although to what purpose isn’t clear. And it’s skillfully shot if over-shot, with a reliance on colored filters that bluntly symbolize the emotional temperature of any given scene.
Best, then, to approach “Cold in July” as a leaner, meaner ’80s homage, from the semi-cheesy synthesizer stings on the soundtrack to the cellphones as big as the characters’ heads. The dread’s just a little deeper now, and the brains on the walls more realistic.
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“Cold in July” has Michael C. Hall playing a small-town everyman pulled into some very bad doings with Sam Shepard and Don Johnson. Stylish but over-plotted, it plays like a throwback to ’80s crime thrillers with a little western DNA.
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Netflix Orders Season 4, Drops New Trailer
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Your sentence at Litchfield just got extended.
Two months ahead of the season three premiere of Orange Is the New Black, Netflix has announced that it ordered a fourth season of the show to debut in 2016.
On Wednesday the company also released a first-look clip of the third season, which premieres on the streaming service June 12. In it, Crazy Eyes (Uzo Aduba) and Poussey (Samira Wiley) debate whether or not the prison’s most polarizing drug dealer Vee (Lorraine Toussaint) is still alive after she getting creamed by a car in last season’s finale.
Read next: Netflix Just Totally Owned Apple Watch Fanboys
Listen to the most important stories of the day.
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Plus: Watch a new clip of season three, premiering June 12
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http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/25/arts/what-rhymes-with-uh-plagiarism.html
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What Rhymes With, uh, Plagiarism?
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20160618200634
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David Sumner is not a famous name in the world of poetry. Neither is he unknown. Like hundreds of other people, he has had reasonable success in placing work in tiny poetry reviews, most of them published at lesser campuses, and from time to time he has managed to break through to midlevel publications.
Mr. Sumner does stand out from the struggling poetry pack in one important respect, however.
For a brief but impressive run that lasted from 1990 to late 1993, 59 poems by "David Sumner" appeared in 36 literary journals, and 12 others had been accepted for publication. That success rate becomes more understandable considering that many of the poems were lifted wholesale from the published work of other poets and simply adorned with new titles.
Mr. Sumner plagiarized the work of at least five poets (only 14 of the 59 poems have been matched with the originals so far), but he specialized in the work of Neal Bowers, a poet and teacher at Iowa State University and until recently the editor of Poet and Critic magazine. And that was his mistake.
In the fall issue of The American Scholar, in an anguished, angry article titled "A Loss for Words: Plagiarism and Silence," Mr. Bowers has outlined his two-year quest to track down Mr. Sumner and put a stop to the man he calls "the Ted Bundy of the poetry world."
Mr. Bowers first learned that his work had been plagiarized in January 1992, when he received a telephone call from Carrie Etter, the editor of Out Loud, a monthly poetry calendar and review in Los Angeles. She informed him that his poem "Tenth-Year Elegy," which had been published in the well-known journal Poetry in September 1990, had shown up, under the title "Someone Forgotten," in the December 1991 issue of the Mankato Poetry Review. The author of the poem was identified as Mr. Sumner, who, the contributor's note stated, lived in Aloha, Ore., and had published poems in the Hawaiian Review, Puerto del Sol and Mississippi Review.
His suspicions aroused, Mr. Bowers enlisted his wife, Nancy, and the two began leafing through stacks of poetry periodicals in his office to see if Mr. Sumner's name turned up. It did.
"I'll bet it wasn't 15 minutes into it before we found the plagiarism of Mark Strand's 'Keeping Things Whole,' a famous poem," Mr. Bowers said in a telephone interview. "We said, 'Uh-oh.' "
Mr. Bowers began calling and writing editors at poetry journals to warn them of possible submissions by Mr. Sumner, and gradually, as he received responses, a dossier began to build, and the facts about the mysterious Mr. Sumner gradually emerged.
The chronology of the plagiarist's activities, assembled by Nancy Bowers, now runs to nearly 60 pages. It begins with the first known poems published under Mr. Sumner's name, in spring 1990, and runs to the fall of 1993, when Mr. Sumner made his last known appearance in print, in Writer's Journal.
A survey of various contributors notes yielded this profile of Mr. Sumner: he was born in Belfast, lived in England until the age of 11, held a master's degree from Pacific University and had studied poetry with William Stafford.
He certainly had made a close study of two short poems by Mr. Bowers, "Tenth-Year Elegy," a tribute to the author's late father, and "R.S.V.P.," a meditation on death. Under various titles, he managed to have them printed in 13 journals and accepted at 6 others, along with poems by Sharon Olds, Marcia Hurlow and Robert Gibb.
"The two poems he stole are very autobiographical, and that's a creepy thing to me," said Mr. Bowers. "It's a very uneasy feeling, a bit like having a stalker."
Along the way, Mr. Sumner took some strange turns. In early 1990, for example, he submitted 10 poems to Mr. Bowers's magazine. All of them were returned with rejection notes. On one occasion, he sent a plagiarized version of "Tenth-Year Elegy" to a journal that had accepted it six months earlier.
In a coup for Mr. Sumner, Whiskey Island Review published, in the same issue, poems by Mr. Sumner and "Diane Compton," a pseudonym he began using toward the end of his spree.
"He's sort of like a young aspiring poet with an M.F.A.," said Mr. Bowers. "He knows the hustle. This may sound cynical, but the system is set up perfectly for him." Like any aspiring poet, Mr. Sumner worked from Poet's Market, a standard guide to the roughly 4,000 magazines that publish poetry, and steadily built up his resume.
Mr. Bowers hired a lawyer, Bruce McKee of Des Moines, and eventually a private detective, to get to the bottom of the mystery. Working from return addresses on Mr. Sumner's submissions to various journals, he found that his plagiarist's real name was David S. Jones, of Aloha, Ore. He was born in 1953, has a bachelor's degree from Southern Illinois University and, indeed, a master's degree from Pacific University. He had taught elementary school in southern Illinois and in Oregon. The rest of the resume was largely faked.
Mr. McKee said the plagiarisms represented a clear-cut case of copyright infringement. Money was not an issue on either side, however. Mr. Bowers said he simply wanted to stop the plagiarism. For his part, Mr. Jones could not have chosen a less promising route to riches. If they are lucky, contributors to poetry magazines receive a small payment, perhaps $50 or $100. Usually, they get nothing more than a couple of free copies of the issue in which their poem appears.
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David Sumner is not a famous name in the world of poetry. Neither is he unknown. Like hundreds of other people, he has had reasonable success in placing work in tiny poetry reviews, most of them published at lesser campuses, and from time to time he has managed to break through to midlevel publications. Mr. Sumner does stand out from the struggling poetry pack in one important respect, however.
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160618204857id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/06/18/tesla-hot-wheels/
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Mattel's Hot Wheels Making Tesla Model S Toy Car
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Tesla Motors’ slick Model S sedan isn’t just for the well-heeled customer anymore — it’s now expanding into crayon-toting, Sketcher-wearing circles.
Hot Wheels, the die-cast toymaker brand owned by Mattel MAT , is producing a 1/64th scale model of Tesla’s luxury all-electric flagship vehicle at a suggested retail price of $1.09. That’s about 69,000 times cheaper than the full size version sold by Palo Alto-based Tesla Motors TSLA . The Hot Wheels version comes in silver and red and is based on high-end P85D all-wheel drive Model S. Tesla customers have broader choices—which comes with a heftier price tag—including deep blue metallic and obsidian black metallic.
The Model S 70D, the automaker’s base model that’s equipped with a 70 kilowatt-hour battery pack, starts at about $75,000 before incentives.
The affordable price isn’t the only perk — Hot Wheels can sell the Model S in any state. It’s available now at retailers Target and Toys R’ Us. Tesla Motors, on the other hand, has been banned from selling directly to customers in a number of states, including Michigan, Arizona and Texas. In March, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill allowing manufacturers of zero-emissions vehicles to sell directly to customers, effectively lifting a ban placed on Tesla in April 2014 by the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission.
This isn’t the first time Hot Wheels has produced a Tesla car. The die-cast toymaker made a Tesla Roadster in 2008. However, this was the first time, Hot Wheels and Tesla designers worked together. Tesla’s director of product design Javier Verdura came to Hot Wheels headquarters and worked with project designer Ryu Asada, according to Mattel spokesman Bret Ingraham.
“It was great Tesla designers got to be toy designers for a day,” Ingraham told Fortune.
Mattel plans to produce about 700,ooo units of the Hot Wheels Model S cars, Ingraham said.
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It costs 69,000 times less than usual
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Myth Women in Tech Need to Stop Believing
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MPW Insider is an online community where the biggest names in business and beyond answer timely career and leadership questions. Today’s answer for: What do you think is the most significant barrier to female leadership? is written by Terri McCullough, director of No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, a Clinton Foundation initiative.
While many of us promise our children that they can be whatever they want when they grow up, the numbers seem to tell a different story. The truth is that women hold around one in four of all STEM jobs despite making up half of the population. As a society, we too often claim — to our children, to our constituents, and to our employees — to want diversity, even as our biases and behaviors continue to create disparities. We have to change the culture if we want to change the numbers.
We know more than ever about the progress women have made, and how far we still have to go. While women’s representation in the private sector has improved over the past 20 years, gender inequality still persists at every level. The chasms are especially prevalent in tech, and in areas such as computer science, the gap is actually worsening. The gender gap in STEM continues as women prepare for and enroll in college. Data from No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project at the Clinton Foundation, reveal that while women earn the majority of all undergraduate degrees in the U.S., they earn only 18% of computer science degrees, down from a high of 37% in 1984. A 22-cent gender wage gap persists, and women continue to spend a disproportionate amount of time on unpaid work.
See also: Here’s Why Women Who Play Sports Are More Successful
Cultural barriers persist for women as they enter the workforce. We’ve all heard — or experienced — the stories of sexism in tech. Such deterrents help keep women outnumbered in startups and boardrooms from New York City to Silicon Valley. But solutions to gender inequality are within reach. Specifically, if we want to foster more equal representation in leadership, institutions and individuals — including and especially men — we must address the explicit, implicit, and internalized biases that limit women’s leadership opportunities.
These biases include the boxes that we place around women in tech. Freeing women from these constraints means recognizing that a tech entrepreneur doesn’t have to look like Mark Zuckerberg. Nor should we expect them to share the same cultural background as him. Too many women are rendered invisible not only by their sex, but also by their race, socio-economic circumstances, and other factors.
We can further increase diversity in leadership by dispelling the myth that every woman in tech has to be a developer or an engineer. According to Kiah Williams, co-founder of SIRUM and a participant at an event that we convened last year on women in technology, many of today’s twenty-somethings don’t realize that they have the potential to lead a tech startup even if they never learn how to code. And, we must close the imagination gap — through mentors, teachers, and the media — so younger girls see the real opportunities in STEM education and professions.
Transforming our culture is the only way to ensure that women of all backgrounds have a fair shot at fulfilling their destinies, whether in tech or any other sphere. We’ve already told our children that the sky is the limit. Now it’s up to all of us to help build a future where it’s true.
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It's the only way to increase diversity.
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'Bachelorette' Star Josh Seiter: Trash Talking The Show Got Me Blackballed
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20160619020227
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'Bachelorette' contestant Josh Seiter says he's being blocked from talking to the media about something as innocent as a charity event, because he accused the show of being staged.
Josh -- who got booted from Kaitlyn Bristowe's season -- says he was supposed to be on "Windy City Live" this week, but ABC contacted the show and Josh's manager to say the appearance would breach his 'Bachelorette' contract.
Josh says he's been allowed to do promotional gigs in the past, and thinks this is especially strange since he was merely going to talk up a breast cancer charity event.
He tells us he suspects the ban has something to do with previous interviews he did after getting booted -- including one on "TMZ Live" -- where he alleged most of the 'Bachelor' and 'Bachelorette' shows are fake.
Josh says he's been told he can still do the charity event, as long as he doesn't talk to the media. We reached out to ABC and Warner Bros. (which produces 'Bachelorette') ... but no comment from either.
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'Bachelorette' contestant Josh Seiter says he's being blocked from talking to the media about something as innocent as a charity event, because…
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Vox raises $200 million from NBCU
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Until recently, $300 million was the highest valuation that digital media companies aspired to. That’s around the price AOL paid for the Huffington Post. Subtract $100 million, and you’re in the ballpark of what NBC Universal paid for Daily Candy and what Turner paid for Bleacher Report.
The latest class of digital media companies is changing that perception. Vox Media, Vice and BuzzFeed, along with fast-growing up-and-comers like Business Insider, Mic, Bustle, Refinery29, and others, carry ambitions that far outstrip the first wave of digital media exits. More importantly, they’ve got the venture capital to support those ambitions.
To wit: Vox Media announced Wednesday a $200 million round of funding from NBC Universal. Vox had previously raised $100 million in funding, including from the venture arm of NBC Universal’s parent company, Comcast CMCSA . Other Vox investors include Accel Partners, Allen & Company, General Atlantic, Khosla Ventures and Ted Leonsis, the former AOL executive. Its most recent round was a $46.5 million raise last fall at a reported valuation of $380 million.
The latest round values Washington, D.C.-based Vox Media at $850 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Including the venture funding, Vox Media now is officially a startup “unicorn” worth more than $1 billion.
CEO and founder Jim Bankoff noted in a statement that the funding is strategic. NBCU and Vox will collaborate on things like video programming and advertising. The companies will also cross-promote content, share technology, and launch new franchises together.
The deal puts to rest – for now, at least – talk that Vox Media would sell to Comcast and NBCU. (Fortune first reported that the two had held deal discussions, which had fallen apart, in April.)
BuzzFeed will surpass Vox’s valuation, if reports come true. Recode, which is owned by Vox Media, reported that NBCU is also nearing a deal to invest $200 million into BuzzFeed at a $1.5 billion valuation.
These deals follow Vice Media’s $2.5 billion valuation, which it got in a funding round last summer. Even Huffington Post, which comes from the first wave of digital content companies, is reported to carry a price tag of $1 billion.
A driving force behind the ballooning valuations of media startups is the narrative they’re telling about their technology. Vox Media, for example, likes to tout Chorus, its in-house content management system. BuzzFeed plays up its use of data. At these valuations, they are too expensive for many of the legacy media companies to acquire. So their only viable avenue to cash out their investors is an IPO.
BuzzFeed has turned down acquisition offers, including a handshake agreement with Disney in 2014. Last December, the company sold $50 million in secondary stock to General Atlantic, which has also backed Vox Media. That deal included a 10-for-1 stock split, sources told Fortune, a move that startups typically make in preparation for an IPO.
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What's driving media company valuations? Technology.
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http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2014/02/family-takes-sides-in-woody-allen-dylan-farrow-case
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160620082935id_/http://abcnews.go.com:80/blogs/entertainment/2014/02/family-takes-sides-in-woody-allen-dylan-farrow-case
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Family Takes Sides in Woody Allen, Dylan Farrow Saga
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20160620082935
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Since Dylan Farrow penned an open letter revealing details of the sexual abuse she claims happened 20 years ago at the hands of her adopted father Woody Allen, relatives on both sides of the complicated family tree have been publicly taking sides.
Farrow, along with her brothers Moses and Ronan, were at the center of a 1993 custody battle between the famed director and their mother, actress Mia Farrow. The couple ended their 12-year-relationship after Allen began a relationship with Mia Farrow's then 19-year-old daughter Soon-Yi Previn, whom she had adopted with ex-husband, composer Andre Previn.
Dylan's Brother Moses Says Mia Farrow, Not Woody Allen Was Abusive
At the time of the breakup, Mia Farrow accused Allen of molesting Dylan. Allen has consistently denied the abuse allegation, maintaining his ex coached their daughter into making the claims, and Connecticut authorities ended their investigation into Allen without filing any charges against the director. Allen then married Soon-Yi in 1997.
But the allegations resurfaced earlier this month after the Times published Dylan's open letter, in which she claimed when she was 7, Allen led her to a "dim, closet-like attic" and "then he sexually assaulted me."
Dylan Farrow Resurrects Woody Allen Molestation Claim
Since then, members of the extensive clan - Mia Farrow has 14 kids from her marriages and adoptions, six Previns and eight Farrows - have spoken out, including those pictured in this photograph of the family in Leningrad in 1987.
Keep reading for a quick who's who, and where they stand on the allegations. From left to right:
Ronan Farrow (held by Lark Previn): Mia Farrow gave birth to Ronan, now 26, during her longtime relationship with Allen but recently suggested that Frank Sinatra might be his father. Born Satchel, Ronan, a former special adviser to the State Department under Hillary Clinton and now host of his own MSNBC show, is estranged from Allen. "He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression," Ronan has said. Last Sunday, he tweeted in support of Dylan, "I love and support my sister and I think her words speak for themselves."
Lark Previn: One of three adopted daughters, including Daisy and Soon-Yi, during Mia Farrow's second marriage to composer Andre Previn, Lark died in 2008 of complications from pneumonia.
Woody Allen (holding Dylan Farrow): Allen, 78, denied Dylan's renewed claims of abuse in a statement from his attorney. "It is tragic that after 20 years a story engineered by a vengeful lover resurfaces even though it was fully vetted and rejected by independent authorities. The one to blame for Dylan's distress is neither Dylan nor Woody Allen," Allen's attorney Elkan Abramowitz said in a statement to CNN. Allen's sister, Letty Aronson, told People he is devastated by Dylan's letter. "He feels very badly for Dylan, that she has been so poisoned by her mother."
Dylan Farrow: At the heart of the renewed family drama, Dylan, who was adopted by Farrow and Allen, is not backing down from her open letter. She told People Wednesday, "My memories are the truth and they are mine and I will live with that for the rest of my life. My mother never coached me. She never planted false memories in my brain. My memories are mine. I remember them. She was distraught when I told her. When I came forward with my story she was hoping against hope that I had made it up. In one of the most heartbreaking conversations I have ever had, she sat me down and asked me if I was telling the truth. She said that Dad said he didn't do anything. And I said, 'He's lying.'"
Fletcher Previn: The youngest of Mia Farrow and Andre Previn's three biological children. He also has older twin brothers Matthew and Sascha Previn. In a November 2013 Vanity Fair article, Fletcher was characterized as Mia Farrow's protector, having painstakingly edited Woody Allen out of every single family photo and video. "We can look at them and be reminded of the good and not be reminded of the bad," he told the magazine.
Daisy Previn: The second adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and Andre Previn, Daisy has not weighed in on the latest turn of events, but she told Vanity Fair in November 2013 that the Soon-Yi affair and abuse allegations, "turned our world upside down. It was nothing you would wish on anyone."
Soon-Yi Previn: The third adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and Andre Previn, Soon-Yi has been married to Allen since 1997 and they have two adopted daughters.
Moses Farrow: Dylan's brother, like her, was adopted by Mia Farrow and Allen when he was 2. Following the bitter custody battle, Mia Farrow was awarded custody of Moses and his siblings, but now Moses, a family therapist, is close to Allen and Soon-Yi and estranged from Mia Farrow and many of his siblings. "Of course Woody did not molest my sister," Moses told People Wednesday. "She loved him and looked forward to seeing him when he would visit. She never hid from him until our mother succeeded in creating the atmosphere of fear and hate towards him. The day in question, there were six or seven of us in the house. We were all in public rooms and no one, not my father or sister, was off in any private spaces. My mother was conveniently out shopping. I don't know if my sister really believes she was molested or is trying to please her mother. Pleasing my mother was very powerful motivation because to be on her wrong side was horrible." Moses said his mother "drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister," and that he now sees it as her "vengeful way to pay him back for falling in love with Soon-Yi."
Dylan called her brother's comments "lies" and "a betrayal," telling People, "My brother is dead to me."
Mia Farrow: Mia Farrow, 69, is standing by her daughter. ABC News was unable to reach her for comment, but on Twitter Tuesday, she wrote, "I love my daughter. I will always protect her. A lot of ugliness is going to be aimed at me. But this is not about me, it's about her truth."
Ann Clifford/DMI/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
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Who's who and where they stand on Farrow's allegations against Allen.
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http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/10/law-to-strip-dual-nationals-of-australian-citizenship-set-to-pass-parliament
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Law to strip dual nationals of Australian citizenship set to pass parliament
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Legislation to strip dual nationals of their Australian citizenship if they are involved in terrorism offences looks set to pass parliament, after the Coalition party room agreed to changes proposed by a multiparty parliamentary committee.
The government decided during its joint party room meeting on Tuesday to adopt all 27 recommendations of the joint committee on intelligence and security.
The recommendations include making the powers retrospective for 10 years, but only for crimes that incurred a sentence of 10 years or more.
The committee also recommended that citizenship only be stripped after a person was convicted of a crime; that a child under 10 could not have their citizenship revoked; and that it only apply to a child under 14 in certain circumstances.
Related: All of Australia's national security changes since 9/11 in a timeline
The government will be made to report on the number of people who have been stripped of their citizenship every six months, and the efficacy of the new powers will be reviewed in full by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor by 1 December 2018.
The party room agreed to adopt two changes in addition to the committee’s recommendations. It proposed a requirement that a person whose citizenship was revoked must have had “intent” to cause a terrorist attack, and added foreign incursion and recruitment to the list of scheduled offences.
The citizenship amendment bill is expected to pass, after securing the support of Labor in September. It will be brought before the House of Representatives this week.
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Coalition agrees to adopt all 27 recommendations of multiparty committee on legislation to revoke citizenship for those involved in terrorism offences
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FOR RENT; Want to Pay Less? Dare to Negotiate
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20160620131224
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CECILIA BASTOS moved into her bright alcove studio in a doorman building on Park Avenue recently after a long, grueling search. It was well worth it. Not only did she find a nice place, she also managed to get a great deal. She negotiated the rent from $1,820 down to $1,500. ''People should know not to be intimidated,'' said Ms. Bastos, 32, a lawyer. ''What's the worst thing that can happen if you try to negotiate?''
More often than not, she said, she would attend open houses where people were ready to just write out a check and pay the asking price. ''People are innately uncomfortable with negotiating and that's really too bad,'' she said. She feels that her pristine credit and her willingness to sign a two-year lease also made her a desirable tenant and helped her negotiation. ''If you don't try to get at least $50 knocked off your rent,'' she said, ''I think you're crazy.''
Although landlords, owners, brokers and agents say the soft rental market of the past few years is beginning to firm up, most agree there is still room to negotiate.
''There are always ways to get rents reduced,'' said Senad Ahmetovic, an associate agent at Halstead/Feathered Nest. His first piece of advice is to pull out as much information as you possibly can from the broker and from other tenants in the building. Find out, for instance, how long an apartment has been on the market and try to gather information about recent rent reductions or concessions. A small landlord may be open to dropping the rent after an apartment has been empty for a month.
Many brokers recommend having a rental portfolio ready to hand to a landlord. It should include proof of earnings, credit history and letters of reference. ''A good clean credit history will go a long way when negotiations are in play,'' said Zana Borisevic, an agent for Manhattan Apartments.
But even spontaneous renters have an advantage. ''If you can move in immediately, you have a good chance of negotiating a lower rent,'' said Yuval Greenblatt, a vice president at Douglas Elliman. ''I think it's the best leveraging tool around.''
He also said that the higher the rent, the more room to negotiate. He recently saw a $6,000 apartment reduced to $5,500 and an $11,000 one have $1,000 knocked off. The financial district, the West 30's and 40's and the low hundreds on the Upper East Side are likely spots, he said, for wheeling and dealing. But it's usually the landlords of smaller buildings and owners of single apartments who are likely to negotiate.
Another trick is to offer to pay rent for six months to a year up front. This is not permitted for rent-stabilized apartments but is legal for apartments not covered by the rent regulations.
Scott Stewart, a vice president with the Corcoran Group, recently negotiated a deal for a family moving into a full-floor, two-bedroom brownstone apartment between Park and Madison on 91st Street. ''By offering a year up front, the rent went from $4,950 down to $4,700, which is a nice savings,'' he said.
Even an exchange of goods and services can help in a negotiation. Jill Koser and Philip Kiracoff of Douglas Elliman co-brokered a deal and helped James Esposito, 21, an equities analyst, get his rent reduced from $1,950 to $1,600. It was an alcove studio in a doorman building on East 51st with lots of closet space, hardwood floors and a very tired kitchen.
His family owns a tile business and he was able to convince the apartment owner that a new kitchen would be a valuable improvement. ''I used to tile as my summer job and I know how to do the work,'' said Mr. Esposito, who will do the renovations.
A general hawk-eye approach to listings and Web sites is also helpful. ''Sometimes building owners will make mistakes,'' Mr. Greenblatt said. ''They are eager to fill a new building and they may not be completely familiar with the market.'' When 1955 Second Avenue opened a few weeks ago (at 100th Street) the building had rentals starting at $1,300, and offered concessions as well as negotiating room. Thirty people showed up immediately.
''In a few short weeks the rents have already gone up, and there's no room to negotiate, Mr. Greenblatt said.
According to Fritz Frigan, director of Leasing for Halstead/Feathered Nest, the demand for apartments is beginning to creep back up, but in buildings with high vacancy rates, there's always room to play with the numbers. ''There are 3,000 rental units scheduled for completion in the Wall Street area this year alone,'' he said. ''That's a good place to start.''
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Advice on how to negotiate lower apartment rent; experts agree that there is still room to negotiate, even though soft rental market of past few years is beginning to firm up; drawing (M)
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http://fortune.com/2016/06/17/george-bush-election/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160620143902id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/06/17/george-bush-election/
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George W. Bush is Helping Republican Senators Win Elections
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20160620143902
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For much of the past eight years, former president George W. Bush has been absent from the political sphere, choosing instead to spend his time on his ranch in Texas. Now, though, the former head of state is making moves to try to help Senators who are in danger of losing this November, especially those who may be hurt by the up-ballot presence of Donald Trump.
Friends of Bush told the New York Times that he is upset with the way Trump has conducted his campaign — which makes sense, considering that Bush’s brother Jeb was Trump’s favorite punching bag, and that one of the major points of Trump’s campaign has been to denigrate the War in Iraq, the controversial centerpiece of the Bush administration. Trump even echoed the left wing theory that Bush and his administration intentionally lied to Congress and the American people to convince them to support the war.
“President Bush believes that it’s critical to keep the Senate in Republican hands,” said Freddy Ford, Mr. Bush’s spokesman, to the Times. “He is actively helping some senators in tight races who are strong leaders and share timeless conservative values.”
It is expected that fundraising by Bush could raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Senate candidates.
Next week Bush will be appearing at an event for Sen. Roy Blount of Missouri. He’ll also be making appearances for Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rob Portman of Ohio.
After a fairly disastrous end to his presidency that saw Bush forced to mostly sit out the race to pick his successor, he’s seeing the rise in popularity that many ex-presidents see, with 47% of people now viewing him favorably. Bush has already said he will not support Trump’s candidacy, so we won’t be seeing him at the convention later this summer.
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And he's here to save the Republican Party.
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6 Tips to Transition From Your Day Job to Your Own Business
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This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.
Many of you reading this right now are working for someone else — helping someone else build their dream. But you probably have a dream of your own that thrills and excites you. And if you’re like most people, you have two main worries holding you back from making the leap:
“How will I replace my day job income?”
“I have an idea for a business, but no idea where to start!”
You are not alone, and you don’t have to hold yourself back anymore. Here are six tips to help you get your dream in motion:
1) Don’t ask what the market needs. Instead, ask, “What can I provide that I love doing?”
And don’t get discouraged by the idea that there are already lots of people doing what you want to do. That would be like saying, “Oh, Michael Jackson’s already done pop. No one ever needs to write a pop song again.” Write your pop song.
2) Clearly identify the gap you’re filling. Different products and services resonate with different types of people. Similar products and services presented in a different way or to a different audience will also resonate with different types of people. Maybe you’re a financial advisor. What makes your approach, experience or process different?
One thing that already makes you different is you! Shine your values, purpose and lived experience in your marketing. If you aren’t certain of your values and purpose, my free ebook will help you uncover them.
3) Create a big picture vision of what you want. Have a clear vision of:
4) Make decisions for where you want to be. Refer to your big picture vision. Imagine yourself there. Feel the energy of that ideal life and business. Ask yourself, “What would the me of my envisioned future decide?”
When you make decisions from a mindset of success and fulfillment, you inevitably attract and create success and fulfillment.
5) Hire someone to guide you, step by step. Look for someone who has already achieved a life and business similar to what you see in your big picture vision. They can help you determine your short and long term goals, and plan practical steps to achieve them.
Make sure the person you hire truly resonates with you. There can be many different ways to achieve what you want. Just because a particular path worked for one person, doesn’t mean it will be right for you. Listen to your inner voice. Trust your instincts.
6) Build your dream at a pace that feels right. When you feel you have enough clients on the side, and a financial cushion your are comfortable with for emergencies, you’ll know you’re ready to take that final leap out of your day job and into your orgasmically joyful life and business.
The only “right time” to do it is the time that feels right to you.
I know, firsthand, how scary it is to take the leap out of your day job to create your own business. I also know how incredibly joyful and fulfilling it is to spend each day doing something you love. If you truly want to change your life, you can. And I promise you, it is worth it!
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It's ok to be scared.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36548114
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160621030313id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36548114
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EU referendum: Could Brexit lead to Sweden 'Swexit'?
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20160621030313
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Sweden is Britain's closest ally when it comes to voting on European policies and staying out of the eurozone. So how might the UK's Nordic neighbour react to Brexit?
On Friday morning, as the UK digests the results of the EU referendum, Swedes will be tucking into pickled herring and dancing around maypoles as part of their annual midsummer festivities.
But while Sweden's biggest public holiday is typically a time when locals flock to the countryside to enjoy a digital detox, plenty in the nation's business and politics communities will be glued to their smartphones over breakfast to find out if Britons have chosen to vote out.
"To have Britain in the European Union right now brings a lot of stability. And if they leave, it will have a huge impact," says Max Hedgren, 27, a recruitment consultant at a finance company in Stockholm.
Sipping on a craft British beer in the Kungsholmen district, he says the real possibility the UK might exit the union is already causing strong jitters among his friends and colleagues.
"I've been following it a lot in the news, and I follow the stock market as well," he says.
"I think it's going to affect us financially, in our private lives, in our jobs."
Wallstrom: Brexit could lead to EU break-up
Follow the latest on the BBC's EU referendum live page
Would Brexit make Putin happy?
Germany conflicted on how to handle Brexit
Multiple polls suggest Swedes are the most convinced in Europe that a British departure would hurt the EU.
In one study for the US-based Pew Research centre, nine out of 10 people questioned concluded it would be "a bad thing" for the bloc.
As well as concerns for the general stability of Europe's financial markets, plenty are worried about the future business relationship between Sweden and the UK, where more than 100 Swedish companies are based.
Per Tryding, deputy chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Southern Sweden, has repeatedly warned that if the UK leaves the union, it would trigger a crisis of confidence in a member state that Swedes frequently "hold up as a role model".
"Swedes are a little bit in love with the UK," he says.
"But now the rules of the game will be unknown.
"What are the real conditions if we do business with or invest in Britain in future?
"That insecurity will make people shy away from investment."
Strong words have also emerged from Sweden's start-up scene, which uses the UK both as a neighbouring talent pool and as a key launch pad outside the Nordics.
Patrik Arnesson, chief executive and co-founder of Gothenburg-based app company Football Addicts, says: "It's fair to say that most of the major European start-ups I talk to see the UK as the next logical step in their international expansion - but if a Brexit occurred, it would likely have a deterring effect on these sorts of plans."
Back in Kungsholmen's bar district, it is clear that voters from both ends of the political spectrum are already absorbing the different arguments.
One woman, who asks to be known only as Maria, says: "It's not a very popular thing to say here in Sweden, but I do think we've taken in too many people and maybe leaving the EU could be a solution."
But student Maria Grundstrom says that is an attitude that worries many of her pro-European friends.
"The right don't want to be in the EU because they don't want immigrants," she says.
"Today it's an open country - but if Brexit wins, it's going to be like a statement for everyone who is on the same page as them to have a clear sign to go forward in Sweden and think, 'Yeah, maybe we are going to leave the EU too.'
"The only group that benefits is right, racist parties."
Meanwhile, student Ragnar Cleveman, 25, says there are completely different reasons he would also back a fresh referendum in his home country.
"It's all just companies and big corporations getting big money and all of these back-room treaties that none of the EU population is involved with," he says.
"If the UK leaves, that's a big thing.
"But, all in all, maybe we shouldn't have been in it from the beginning."
From a political standpoint, Sweden will lose its main ally in the European Union if Britain goes, with the two countries sharing the same perspective in almost 90% of votes.
Some commentators have even argued that Sweden, which like the UK has retained its own currency, could face heavy pressure to drop the kronor for the euro in the event of a Brexit, a possibility that Swedish ministers have been quick to dismiss.
Meanwhile, despite strong public support for the status quo, there is growing concern that ordinary Swedes might not be so keen on continuing their love affair with the EU, if the UK chooses to divorce itself from the 28-member bloc.
A recent poll by TNS Sifo suggested that only 32% of Swedes would want to remain in the EU if Britain left, with 36% in favour of a so-called Swexit.
Sweden's Social Democrat EU Minister Ann Linde told journalists in Stockholm on Tuesday that she was worried Brexit might rewind her country to the arguments of the early 1990s, when Swedes had their own referendum on joining the union.
"It will be like opening up the Yes and No debate again," she said.
The Nordic nation's Foreign Minister, Margot Wallstrom, has even gone as far as suggesting Brexit could break up the entire union.
"That might affect other EU member states that will say:, 'Well, if they can leave, maybe we should also have referendums, and maybe we should also leave,'" she told the BBC's This Week's World programme.
With all of Sweden's mainstream centre-right opposition parties also remaining in favour of Sweden's membership, it is perhaps the far right in the Scandinavian country that may stand to gain the most if the Brits go through with Brexit.
The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats polled 12.9% in Sweden's 2014 election, and saw their support rise to about 20% as Sweden took in a record 163,000 asylum seekers last year.
The party's leader, Jimmie Akesson, is already a strong critic of freedom of movement within the EU and has repeatedly called for Sweden to "become a sovereign state again".
"I really hope we get the opportunity to hold a referendum in Sweden eventually," he said in a recent televised leadership debate on Swedish public broadcaster SVT.
"I see nothing negative about leaving this supranational European Union."
However, despite Swexit chatter already creeping into the headlines in Sweden, both the Social Democrat-Green government and the largest centre-right opposition party, the Moderates, are adamant they have no desire for Sweden to hold a referendum any time soon.
"Even if a few politicians who favour withdrawal feel they have gained support, there is a strong majority in favour of EU membership," said Anne Linde.
"The EU is beneficial for Sweden."
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Sweden is Britain's closest ally when it comes to voting on European policies and staying out of the Eurozone. Could it follow the UK out of the EU?
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http://www.tmz.com/2015/07/02/paris-hilton-dubai-plane-crash-prank-fake-contract-million-dollars
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Paris Hilton -- FAKED Horror in 'Plane Crash' Stunt ... In on the Prank
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20160621085155
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Paris Hilton is a better actress than we thought ... we've learned she was totally in on the "near plane crash" stunt.
TMZ has obtained a document prepared by the Egyptian production company behind the prank. Turns out Paris wasn't their first choice. The company sent the offer to the reps of other American celebs back in March, offering them big money to participate in the prank.
The document states, "We will act as if something is going wrong and ask all passengers to jump off the plane!!! Of course everyone will panic, we'll be having skydivers in disguise with us on board."
The doc goes on, "We will monitor the funny reactions from our celebrity guest when they fear jumping off the plane."
And the document even mentions the stunt has the blessing of Dubai authorities ... "Dubai official authorities are monitoring this show and providing us with security. If you want to make sure, you can contact the office of crown prince of Dubai, his majesty Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum. He himself will be supervising the progress of the project."
Sources say the production company offered a huge amount of money to a willing celeb ... in the million dollar range.
We got Paris out Wednesday in Bev Hills, and listen closely ... she talks about the pilot "taking it too far." The question ... what, if anything, was she expecting?
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Paris Hilton is a better actress than we thought ... we've learned she was totally in on the "near plane crash" stunt. TMZ has obtained a…
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http://www.people.com/article/orange-new-black-samira-wiley-joins-youre-worst
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160621133628id_/http://www.people.com/article/orange-new-black-samira-wiley-joins-youre-worst
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Samira Wiley Joins You're the Worst : People.com
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20160621133628
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06/20/2016 AT 02:45 PM EDT
just got a new therapist.
: For those who haven't finished season 4 of
, plot details will be revealed ahead.
While many fans are still mourning the loss of
, the actress has landed a new spot on the critically acclaimed FXX show
She will be reuniting with creator Stephen Falk, with whom the 29-year-old actress worked on
"It feels a little full circle or serendipitous that it's happening in this way," Wiley said to
of reuniting with Falk. "He's a great guy and I'm so excited to be able to work for him. [The character is] totally different [from Poussey], which is everything I want to do now."
and Poussey have given me my life as an actor, and where I am in my career right now," Wiley continued. "But I am an actor at the end of the day and I want to make sure I can show the world different parts of myself."
"Poussey is not all that I am and as an actor, I want to be able to play roles that are wildly different from the last role that I've played. In terms of roles that I'm seeking now and movies that I'm doing, that's the goal. To do things that are on the other end of the spectrum from Poussey."
Wiley's new role is that of a therapist, to star Aya Cash's Gretchen.
"Samira is an incredibly talented, thoughtful and exciting actress," Falk told
. "When I worked on
I got to write the episode with Poussey's backstory, and we had such a good time that early on in writing this season of
I hit on the random thought of having Samira play Gretchen's therapist. It seemed like kind of a weird choice, given that she's younger, and on another show, but once it came to mind, the idea of casting anyone else bummed me out. So I didn't."
is now streaming on Netflix.
season 3 premieres Aug. 31 at 10 p.m. ET on FXX.
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"I want to be able to play roles that are wildly different from the last role that I've played," Wiley said
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PERSONAL HEALTH - The Color of Nutrition - Fruits and Vegetables - NYTimes.com
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20160621174716
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Colorize your diet. That is the latest advice from nutrition experts who have studied the health-promoting properties of the vast spectrum of colorful fruits and vegetables now available throughout the country.
Two recently published books -- ''What Color Is Your Diet?'' (Regan Books, $25), by Dr. David Heber, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of California at Los Angeles, with Susan Bowerman, a dietitian, and ''The Color Code'' (Hyperion, $22.95) by Dr. James A. Joseph, Dr. Daniel A. Nadeau and Anne Underwood -- emphasize the importance of increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables, and the need to choose broadly among the richly colored options.
This is not hard to do, and the payoff in terms of health -- and weight -- can be considerable. Nearly all fruits and vegetables are naturally very low in fat, replete with filling fiber and loaded with natural chemicals that can help protect against heart disease, cancer and age-related cognitive decline, cataracts and macular degeneration.
To me there is nothing more beautiful and tempting in a modern market than the expansive array of colorful produce, their vivid skins all the more enticing because of their health-promoting benefits. And even the paler members of this community -- garlic, onions, leeks, cabbage, celery and the like -- have notable health-promoting virtues.
Fruits and vegetables come closer than any other category of food to behaving like a fountain of youth. Each one is power-packed with plant-based chemicals, or phytonutrients, that can help to prevent or even reverse one or more chronic, debilitating and often deadly diseases.
For a detailed account of the protective chemicals nature has bestowed upon various fruits and vegetables and how these chemicals can help you as well as the plants they come in, consult ''The Color Code.'' This book and ''What Color Is Your Diet?'' also provide tempting recipes to encourage an increased intake of produce, which should add up to 9 or 10 servings a day. No doubt you have encountered government health experts' ''five-a-day'' campaign, currently achieved by at most a third of the population, and now I am saying double that, based on the findings that are coming in. If you check the Food Pyramid, you will see that five servings a day of fruits and vegetables is the bare minimum recommended to achieve a wholesome diet; nine servings or more are optimal for health maintenance.
But merely counting servings may not even be adequate if, these experts now say, you are missing out on one or more major color categories.
''Not all members of the fruit and vegetable group are alike,'' Dr. Heber says. ''They have unique properties that provide combinations of substances with unique effects on human biology. Therefore, simply eating five servings a day of fruits and vegetables will not guarantee that you are eating enough of the different substances needed to stimulate the metabolic pathways of genes in the different organs where fruits and vegetables have their beneficial effects.''
''Pigment power'' is what it is all about, say the authors of ''The Color Code,'' who divide fruits and vegetables into four broad color groups: red, orange-yellow, green and blue-purple, each with a different set of beneficial phytonutrients. Dr. Heber, who is more of a ''splitter,'' groups them into seven color categories, as follows:
Red, including tomatoes (especially cooked tomato products), pink grapefruit and watermelon, which are rich in the carotenoid lycopene, a potent scavenger of gene-damaging free radicals that seems to protect against prostate cancer as well as heart and lung disease.
Red/purple, including red and blue grapes, blueberries, strawberries, beets, eggplant, red cabbage, red peppers, plums and red apples, which are loaded with powerful antioxidants called anthocyanins believed to delay cellular aging and help the heart by blocking the formation of blood clots. Dr. Heber includes red wine in this category.
Orange, including carrots, mangoes, cantaloupe, winter squash and sweet potatoes, rich in the cancer-fighter alpha carotene, along with beta carotene that protects the skin against free-radical damage and promotes repair of damaged DNA.
Orange/yellow, including oranges, peaches, papaya and nectarines, which provide beta cryptothanxin, which supports intracellular communication and may help prevent heart disease.
Yellow/green, including spinach, collards, corn, green peas, avocado and honeydew, which are sources of the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin. These are strongly linked to a reduced risk of cataracts and age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of preventable blindness in developed countries.
Green, including broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale and bok choy. These are rich in cancer-blocking chemicals like sulforaphane, isocyanate and indoles, which inhibit the action of carcinogens.
White/green, including garlic, onions, leeks, celery, asparagus, pears and green grapes. The onion family contains allicin, which has antitumor properties. Other foods in this group contain antioxidant flavonoids like quercetin and kaempferol. Dr. Heber includes white wine in this category.
The trick, these experts say, is to include as many plant-based colors in your daily diet as possible. In many cases, that means eating the colorful skins, the richest sources of protective phytonutrients, along with the paler flesh. So try to avoid peeling foods like apples, peaches and eggplant lest you lose their most concentrated source of beneficial chemicals.
Getting in 10 servings a day of produce is not that difficult, once you realize what a serving is. It is one medium apple, banana or orange, half a grapefruit, a quarter of a cantaloupe, a cup of raw leafy vegetables, half a cup of cooked or chopped raw vegetable or fruit and six ounces of fruit or vegetable juice.
If you start your day with juice, add fruit to your breakfast cereal, yogurt, pancakes or French toast; snack on whole fruit, fruit salad or vegetables like baby carrots; have a big salad with lunch or dinner; drink a vegetable or fruit juice before or with your meals; dine on main courses that include stir-fried, stewed, grilled or steamed vegetables and include fruit in your dessert, you will readily achieve and even surpass the 10-a-day goal without overdosing on calories. Dr. Heber has produced a revised version of the Food Pyramid, placing fruits and vegetables at the base, with grain-based foods above them.
My favorite home supper is a huge salad that typically includes spinach, richly colored lettuce, arugula, red pepper, avocado, asparagus and tomatoes, topped by a lean source of protein: slivered grilled chicken or turkey breast, pork, beef, salmon or tuna, cooked beans or a sliced hard-boiled egg. With a slice of whole-grain bread, a glass of vegetable juice or red wine and melon for dessert, I have got a full dinner and at least six of my day's produce servings.
Photo: Most diners would do well to increase their consumption of richly colored fruits and vegetables, which are naturally low in fat and contain fiber and natural chemicals than can help protect against disease. (Naum Kazhdan/The New York Times)
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Colorize your diet. That is the latest advice from nutrition experts who have studied the health-promoting properties of the vast spectrum of colorful fruits and vegetables now available throughout the country. Two recently published books -- ''What Color Is Your Diet?'' (Regan Books, $25), by Dr. David Heber, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of California at Los Angeles, with Susan Bowerman, a dietitian, and ''The Color Code'' (Hyperion, $22.95) by Dr. James A. Joseph, Dr. Daniel A. Nadeau and Anne Underwood -- emphasize the importance of increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables, and the need to choose broadly among the richly colored options.
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Attorney Arnold Laub, who sought Golden Gate Bridge median, dies
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20160621175027
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Attorney Arnold Laub, who sought Golden Gate Bridge median, dies
A memorial service is scheduled Friday for Arnold Laub, a prominent and flamboyant San Francisco personal-injury lawyer whose lawsuit on behalf of a crash victim helped start the campaign to install a median barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Mr. Laub died Dec. 26 after being hospitalized for heart problems. He was 80.
He had practiced law in the Bay Area since 1961 and remained at work until two weeks before his death, said his wife, Isabelle Valentine Laub.
Born in Vallejo, Mr. Laub worked as a dance instructor at an Arthur Murray studio in Los Angeles before attending UC Berkeley and its law school. Former San Francisco Supervisor Angela Alioto, a longtime friend, said Mr. Laub would often recall the days when "he was a dishwasher boy at Berkeley, and his dream was to get into Boalt Hall."
As a measure of his success, an entranceway at the law school has been named the Arnold Laub Lobby.
According to his website, Mr. Laub, while awaiting his bar exam results, worked as an insurance claims adjuster, encountered questionable company practices and "decided to represent the plaintiffs to even out the playing field."
He started what became one of the largest San Francisco law firms representing plaintiffs in injury cases, from dog bites and car crashes to defective medications.
One of his most important cases began in November 1994 when a driver on the Golden Gate Bridge sideswiped a truck driven by David Sutton, who veered across the center line and crashed into another truck, killing the driver.
Sutton, of Sonoma, lost a leg and four fingers and suffered extensive burns. He hired Mr. Laub and sued, seeking to shut down the bridge until it installed a median barrier.
The courts ruled against him, but Sutton and Mr. Laub continued to push for a barrier. In September, bridge district directors approved funding for a 32-inch-high median to be installed this fall.
Mr. Laub also filed one of the first lawsuits against the manufacturers of fen-phen, a widely prescribed diet drug that was taken off the market in 1997 because of side effects that included cases of heart valve damage. In 2000, a federal judge approved a nationwide $3.75 billion settlement for as many as 200,000 consumers.
Mr. Laub was also an early and frequent user of billboards and other advertising, which was forbidden by attorneys' ethical codes until the mid-1970s. The practice was controversial.
"Self-promotion is not a respected thing in the legal community," and for many lawyers, ads like those for Mr. Laub's firm were "anathema," said San Francisco attorney Bob Arns. But he said Mr. Laub was "actually a quite good lawyer and a good guy."
"You could say he was a little flamboyant, but why hide your success?" said another veteran personal-injury lawyer and longtime friend, Gary Gwilliam of Oakland.
Mr. Laub drove a Rolls-Royce and held birthday bashes at upscale restaurants and hotels, Gwilliam said.
Politically active in Democratic circles, Mr. Laub served as co-chairman of finances for John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004. In 2010 he was appointed by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom as chief financial officer of the San Francisco Finance Corp., an arm of the city controller's office that handles real estate purchases and construction.
Mr. Laub is survived by his wife; sons David Laub of Tiburon and Steven Laub of Atherton; daughters Tina-Marie Ashby of Farmington, Utah, and Alicia Laub of San Francisco; and eight grandchildren.
A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The family requests that gifts in his name be made to the Boalt Hall Fund at UC Berkeley Law School, 2850 Telegraph Ave., Suite 500, Berkeley, CA 94705.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com
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A memorial service is scheduled Friday for Arnold Laub, a prominent and flamboyant San Francisco personal-injury lawyer whose lawsuit on behalf of a crash victim helped start the campaign to install a median barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge. According to his website, Mr. Laub, while awaiting his bar exam results, worked as an insurance claims adjuster, encountered questionable company practices and "decided to represent the plaintiffs to even out the playing field." Mr. Laub also filed one of the first lawsuits against the manufacturers of fen-phen, a widely prescribed diet drug that was taken off the market in 1997 because of side effects that included cases of heart valve damage. "Self-promotion is not a respected thing in the legal community," and for many lawyers, ads like those for Mr. Laub's firm were "anathema," said San Francisco attorney Bob Arns. In 2010 he was appointed by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom as chief financial officer of the San Francisco Finance Corp., an arm of the city controller's office that handles real estate purchases and construction.
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3 Important Skills Every New Manager Needs To Have
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The Leadership Insider network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in business contribute answers to timely questions about careers and leadership. Today’s answer to the question “What is the most important quality a leader should demonstrate?” is by David Gordon, president of The Cheesecake Factory.
Can you remember where you were on December 1, 1993? I can remember that day perfectly. I was newly married and it was my first day of work as a manager at The Cheesecake Factory. Back then The Cheesecake Factory was a public company with nine restaurant locations and employing more than 1,500 staff members. I had the typical emotions anyone would have before starting a new chapter in their lives—excitement, nervousness, a little anxiety—and I was certainly bursting with energy. Now 22 years later, I am president of The Cheesecake Factory and often experience those same emotions on any given day.
About eight or nine times a year I meet with new managers within their first six to nine months on the job. They frequently ask me the following question, “How did you go from our seat as a brand new manager 22 years ago, to being the president of an organization with more than 36,000 staff members around the world?” Certainly a question I would ask if I were in their shoes.
I’ll often share stories about pivotal moments throughout my career when my core values guided my decision-making and served as the foundation for “why” I have been able to achieve professional and personal success. But at the root of these values lie three core beliefs: humility, self-awareness, and a desire to serve others. I’ve learned that these values are the “roots,” and when firmly planted, can help all leaders to grow—while enabling and empowering greatness in those around them.
First, it’s about humility—truly accepting that I don’t actually know it all and I make mistakes. I am willing to speak up and share my experiences — good and bad — so that others can learn from them. I know none of us can build a business or achieve extraordinary goals by ourselves. We are all greater when we build on each other’s strengths and leverage the capabilities of an aligned team.
Next, self-awareness is essential—having the ability to slow down, look in the mirror, and understand that my non-verbal cues communicate more than the actual words that come out of my mouth. I have to create an environment where the people I work with consistently provide me with honest feedback about the messages I’m sending—messages that either inspire others towards new levels of accomplishment, or create a stifling environment that limits their potential.
Lastly, the concept of serving others is fundamental. Certainly in my line of work, the hospitality industry, if you are not built to serve others, then perhaps you are in the wrong business. But in the broader context, and in today’s world more than ever, leaders must strive to do work that matters; work that makes the lives of those they serve, directly and indirectly, better. When we are able to derive joy from making those we serve a little happier, or healthier, or stronger in some way, we fulfill the true role of a leader.
So, it has been approximately 7,700 days since my first day at The Cheesecake Factory. I may be a bit older, a few pounds heavier and have not quite as much hair on my head (I have no hair on my head). However, what I do have is 22 years of staying true to my values and allowing my three core beliefs to guide my daily decisions and behavior.
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Create an environment that inspires employees, not one that stifles their potential.
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'Candy Crush Saga' Maker Files for an IPO
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King Digital Entertainment PLC's plans for a $500 million initial public offering sets up a crucial test for investors: Can the hugely profitable but fickle new smartphone-games industry be sustained?
"Candy Crush Saga," a colorful, maddeningly addictive puzzle game boosted revenue at the company more than tenfold last year.
The game is free but players are charged for in-game features. Now the test is for King and competitors such as Finland's Supercell Oy to prove they are nimble enough to win over high-spending users with that "freemium" model amid intense competition and consumer tastes that turn on a dime.
Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen recently showed the low barrier to entry for King competitors when his bare-bones "Flappy Bird" game, which he said took him just a few days to develop, topped download charts globally until he took it offline.
And hanging over a King IPO is the shadow of Zynga Inc., a pioneer of the online-games industry. Zynga's shares sank as it struggled to repeat the winning formula of its popular "FarmVille" game.
"The biggest fear of course is that King is another Zynga," said Tero Kuittinen, an analyst with mobile-diagnostics company Alekstra Inc. He said a key concern is that investors will view King as a one-trick pony and that it won't be able to repeat the successes of "Candy Crush."
The Anglo-Swedish company acknowledged that "Candy Crush" has already shown signs of aging since its October 2012 release. King blamed a decline in revenue in the fourth quarter from the third on "a decrease in 'Candy Crush Saga' gross bookings," a measure of game revenues—across other titles.
King acknowledged that "a small number of games currently generate a substantial majority of our revenue." Its top three games—"Candy Crush," "Pet Rescue Saga" and "Farm Heroes Saga"—accounted for 95% of its total gross bookings, in the fourth quarter, King said in a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. And "Candy Crush" accounted for 78%.
King executives declined to comment beyond the company's filing.
Though hit titles can be fleeting, the mobile-games business still offers significant opportunity. Global mobile-game revenue is expected to rise 30% this year from $13.2 billion last year, according to technology research firm Gartner Inc.
That booming market has translated into outsize profit for King and its rivals. King reported profit of $567.6 million last year, up from $7.8 million in 2012. Revenue jumped to $1.88 billion from $164.4 million. "Candy Crush" was played by 93 million people more than a billion times daily in December, King said in its filing.
Supercell this month reported that earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization quadrupled to $464 million last year. Japan's SoftBank Corp. last year bought a 51% stake in Supercell for $1.5 billion, the largest investment ever in a mobile-game company.
At least initially, King appears to have some future opportunity. "Papa Pear Saga," released last November, joined "Candy Crush" among the 10 most-downloaded apps globally for Apple Inc. devices in December, according to App Annie, which tracks app downloads and revenues. And "Farm Heroes Saga," released for mobile devices in January, was among the 10 highest-grossing iPhone apps this month in the U.S. and the U.K., App Annie said.
King said it plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KING. J.P. Morgan Chase& Co., Credit Suisse Group AG and Bank of America Merrill Lynch were selected as lead bankers for the IPO.
The company hasn't decided on an IPO price or stock-market value. The company might aim for a long-term earnings multiple on par with game companies such as Electronic Arts Inc. and Activision Blizzard Inc., people familiar with the matter said. That could peg the company's value at $8 billion to $10 billion, including equity awards. But the IPO likely would be priced at a discount to that value, depending on investor demand, the people said.
King said its board valued the company's shares at $45.61 apiece in December. Based on the number of shares outstanding at the time, that valued the entire company at $5.5 billion, though that wouldn't include items such as options exercisable after the IPO.
The purpose of the IPO is to create a market for current and future employees and investors to sell shares and to give the company "greater flexibility to act on strategic opportunities," Riccardo Zacconi, King's chief executive and co-founder, said in the filing. The company doesn't need money for its operations or growth, King said.
King plans to allow existing investors to sell shares in the IPO. Mr. Zacconi owns about 10% and about half is owned by Apax Partners LLP, a European private-equity firm. An additional 8% is held by venture-capital firm Index Ventures. King has paid out $500 million to investors since last year through two dividends.
King, with development studios in five European cities, including London and Stockholm, is a relatively seasoned player in the games business, dating to 2002. It rose to prominence only recently amid the explosion of games for Apple's iPhone and phones running Google Inc. 's Android operating system.
For years, King existed in the shadows of higher-profile game makers in Sweden, such as DICE, a developer owned by Electronics Arts that make action-packed shooter games for computers and videogame consoles.
King's main business was its unassuming King.com site, where game players could log in from their computers' Internet browsers for a few moments with a colorful game. When Facebook Inc. opened up its site to games, King executives said they quickly came to the conclusion that King's relatively straightforward puzzle-based games were a good fit for the social network.
"Bubble Witch Saga" was King's first Facebook hit, in late 2011 and early 2012. The game, which challenges users to line up rows of colored bubbles, became the third most-played game on Facebook. But watching the rapid migration of users to mobile devices from computers, King executives decided they need to make the game available independently on Google's and Apple's mobile platforms.
King still tests new games on its website. Days after releasing games at King.com, the company will have collected enough data to know which titles are ripe for Facebook and mobile versions, executives have said.
Zynga's public offering offers a cautionary note. Zynga listed in 2011 and its shares have performed poorly since, falling more than 50% as investors questioned whether it could repeat the popularity of "FarmVille." Zynga's revenue fell last year, and the company posted losses for three years straight. Still, its share price has recovered somewhat, climbing 59% in the past year, but they are still 49% below their IPO price. Zynga's shares rose 28 cents, or 5.8%, to close at $5.15 Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
King has moved to distinguish its stock offering from Zynga's. For one, King has filed for a smaller offering, $500 million versus $1 billion, despite its larger revenue and profit base.
And King has been particularly straightforward about the slowing growth of its top game, which could help investors make a better decision about how to value the company, said Arvind Bhatia, an analyst at Sterne Agee Group, Inc. "King has essentially said [in the filing] very clearly that things have slowed with 'Candy'.…If investors are going into this knowing that, and seek an adjusted price for that, the stock can work," he said.
Write to Sven Grundberg at sven.grundberg@wsj.com and Telis Demos at telis.demos@wsj.com
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The IPO of King Digital, which makes 'Candy Crush Saga,' sets up a test for investors: Can the hugely profitable smartphone-games industry be sustained?
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Obama takes Oregon; Clinton wins Kentucky
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(CNN) -- Despite Hillary Clinton's landslide victory in Kentucky, Barack Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates in the race for the Democratic nomination.
Clinton won Kentucky by more than 30 points, but Obama's share of the state's 51 delegates was enough put him over the threshold, according to CNN estimates.
Obama is expected to pick up at least 14 delegates in Kentucky, and by CNN estimates, that will give him 1,627 of the 3,253 pledged delegates at stake in all of primaries and caucuses.
Obama will also pick up a win in Oregon, CNN projects, giving him the larger share of the state's 52 delegates.
Obama's top strategist, David Axelrod, said getting the pledged delegate majority was an "important milestone," but not the end of the trail.
Neither candidate is expected to reach the 2,026 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.
That means the race is likely to be settled by "superdelegates" -- party leaders and officials who will cast votes at the Democratic convention in August.
Speaking in Iowa, where he won the first-in-the-nation caucuses, Obama told supporters, "it was in this great state where we took the first steps of an unlikely journey to change America." Watch Obama say he's in reach of the nomination »
"The skeptics predicted we wouldn't get very far. The cynics dismissed us as a lot of hype and a little too much hope. And by the fall, the pundits in Washington had all but counted us out. But the people of Iowa had a different idea," he said.
Obama continued to look to the general election, focusing his attacks as he has for the past week on Sen. John McCain, while commending Clinton for "her courage, her commitment and her perseverance."
Obama said McCain's policies don't represent change.
"This year's Republican primary was a contest to see which candidate could out-Bush the other, and that is the contest John McCain won," he said.
McCain's camp accused Obama of launching "the tired old political attacks of a typical politician, not the 'new politics' he's promised."
"Without a doubt, Barack Obama is a talented political orator, but his naive plans for unconditional summits with rogue leaders and support for big tax hikes on hardworking families expose his bad judgment that Americans can ill-afford in our next president," spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement.
After Kentucky's results came in, Clinton thanked her supporters for handing her a win "even in the face of some pretty tough odds."
"Tonight we have achieved an important victory," she said in Louisville.
"It's not just Kentucky bluegrass that's music to my ears. It's the sound of your overwhelming vote of confidence even in the face of some pretty tough odds." Watch Clinton vow to keep going »
Clinton beat Obama across all age groups, income groups and education levels in Kentucky.
Eighty-nine percent of Tuesday's voters in Kentucky were white, according to the exit polls. Among them, Clinton won 72-22 percent. Nine percent of the voters were African-American and they overwhelmingly broke for Obama, 87-7 percent.
The exit polls from Kentucky also suggest a deep division among Democrats. Watch how Clinton's win could affect the race »
Two-thirds of Clinton's supporters there said they would vote Republican or not vote at all rather than for Obama, according to the polls.
Forty-one percent of Clinton supporters said they'd cast their vote for McCain, and 23 percent said they would not vote at all.
Just 33 percent said they would back Obama in the general election, according to the polls.
Those numbers are even worse for Obama than in West Virginia one week ago, where 36 percent of Clinton voters said they would back him in the fall.
Obama on Tuesday downplayed the idea that his party will have trouble unifying once there is a nominee.
"Some may see the millions upon millions of votes cast for each of us as evidence that our party is divided, but I see it as proof that we have never been more energized and united in our desire to take this country in a new direction," he said.
"More than anything, we need this unity and this energy in the months to come, because while our primary has been long and hard-fought, the hardest and most important part of our journey still lies ahead."
Obama leads Clinton in the number of states won and in the popular vote in the primary and caucus contests this campaign season, but he has been careful not to declare victory in the Democratic contest.
Obama doesn't have enough delegates to capture the nomination outright; Clinton still has a chance, if a slight one, to win the nomination if enough of the roughly 800 superdelegates were to back her.
"I'm going to make [my case] until we have a nominee, but we're not going to have one today, and we're not going to have one tomorrow, and we're not going to have one the next day," Clinton said Monday in Kentucky.
She argues that she leads in the popular vote, but her argument is debatable.
For Clinton to claim such a lead, primary states but not caucus states -- which Obama mostly won -- would only be counted, plus the popular vote totals in Florida and Michigan.
Florida and Michigan were stripped of their delegates for scheduling their primaries too early, in violation of Democratic Party rules. Obama's name wasn't on the Michigan ballot, and he received no votes in that state's contest.
Clinton also argues that she's won the states that she contends would stack up stronger against McCain in the general election.
"The states I've won total 300 electoral votes. If we had the same rules as the Republicans, I would be nominee right now," she said. "We have different rules, so what we've got to figure out is who can win 270 electoral votes. My opponent has won states totaling 217 electoral votes."
CNN's Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
All About Barack Obama • Hillary Clinton
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Despite Hillary Clinton's landslide victory in Kentucky, Barack Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates in the race for the Democratic nomination.
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State Police Were 'Bullying' Kayaker Charged With Murdering Fiance : People.com
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, the woman accused of
during a kayaking trip last year, said in court Tuesday that his client was bleeding and may have miscarried during a grueling 11-hour questioning at a State Police barracks,
Meanwhile, a witness testified that police were "bullying" Graswald shortly after the fatal trip.
Graswald faces murder and manslaughter charges in the death of Vince Viafore, 46, who drowned as the couple kayaked from Bannerman Island in the Hudson River back to the mainland on April 19, 2015. Viafore was not wearing a life jacket when he capsized into the rough 46-degree waters, which
can cause almost immediate hypothermia.
Tuesday marked the final day of Graswald's pretrial hearing, and testimony also revealed that during the videotaped questioning on April 29, 2015, and into the early morning hours of April 30, Graswald allegedly admitted to investigators that she tampered with fiancé Viafore's kayak while knowing that would cause his death,
State police investigator Donald DeQuarto also said on the stand that Graswald was advised of her Miranda Rights – her right to remain silent and her right to an attorney – at the start of the 11-hour questioning, but not after that, reports
Her attorney, Richard Portale, said that seven hours into the interrogation, Graswald asked what were Miranda Rights, according to
that Graswald admitted to him during a private conversation on Bannerman Island on April 29 – less than two weeks after Viafore's death – that she removed the drain plug from Viafore's kayak, tampered with a ring on his paddle to cause him to capsize, and that, once he was in the frigid, choppy waters, pulled the paddle away from him as he struggled for life.
that Viafore's desire to have threesomes and other sexual demands made Graswald "feel trapped."
The pretrial hearing was held to determine if Graswaldâs admissions were voluntary and can be used at trial. An Orange County, New York, judge is expected to make a decision on the statements July 28, according to reports.
Portale has been trying to establish that police prematurely zeroed in on Graswald as a suspect. He questioned DeQuarto about a volunteer who had stopped by while investigators were with Graswald on the island, according to reports.
Portale called witness Susan McCardelle, who volunteers as a gardener at Bannerman and who knew Graswald, according to reports.
McCardelle testified that police were "bullying" Graswald on the island that day before she went off with DeQuarto and made the
That afternoon, three investigators and Graswald were sitting on a trail, with Graswald in tears, McCardell told the court.
"It was obvious to me she should not be alone with these three men talking to her like that," McCardell said, according to
. When she asked Graswald if she needed help, one investigator replied: "She doesn't really need you, it's okay," McCardell told the court, according to the newspaper.
McCardell checked in with a tearful Graswald several times that afternoon, and each time Graswald said she was okay, McCardell said, according to reports.
Prosecutors have said Graswald would have collected $250,000 in life insurance benefits from Viafore's death. Portale maintains Viafore died accidentally when his kayak capsized.
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The pretrial hearing for Angelika Graswald, charged in drowning death of Vincent Viafore, concluded Tuesday
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Steel crisis: Tata's pain intensifies as China imposes hefty tariffs on hi-tech steel
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Business secretary Sajid Javid arrived at the Port Talbot steel plant early this afternoon, after cutting short a trip to Australia.
Around 800 steel workers were waiting outside to hear what he had to say.
After he left the meeting, Mr Javid told gatherers that there had been some interest in Tata's steel portfolio, but he could not give more detail because of "commercial reasons."
He reiterated that nationalisation was not the answer.
"I think almost everyone agrees that nationalisation is not a long term viable solution. What everyone wants to see is something that's viable for the long term," he said.
It was claimed the Government had led the way in blocking EU tariffs on cheap steel products, which could have cut down imports from China.
However, when asked why the Government had stopped the EU from raising the 9pc tariff, Mr Javid said this wasn't the case.
"We haven't stopped the EU raising any tariff, in fact I would like to see the EU making sure that their tariffs are high enough to stop dumping or to remedy any challenges faced by the industry.
"That's their current rule book, and I think that within their current rule book they can do more both in terms of speed, how quickly they look at these issues, but also in terms of the height of these tariffs themselves ."
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China has levied huge new tarrifs on a type of steel produced by Britain despite David Cameron personally challenging the country’s president to help save UK steelmakers, it emerged yesterday.
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Lolo Jones -- I'm Praying For Oscar Pistorius ... My Dad Was a Killer Too
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has no problem showing sympathy for convicted killer
... because her father also went to prison for homicide.
Jones was at LAX Thursday when we asked if she agreed with
for Pistorius, and her answer was pretty surprising. She opened up about her father's life sentence for a murder, and why it's made her "non judgmental" about Oscar -- despite all the facts surrounding
Check out the clip ... Jones does say she's praying for both families involved -- but refuses to condemn Pistorius. Strange?
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Lolo Jones has no problem showing sympathy for convicted killer Oscar Pistorius ... because her father also went to prison for homicide.Jones…
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Month in space: Oct. 2015
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Before you go, we thought you'd like these...
Month in space: Oct. 2015
On Oct. 12-13, 2015, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly shared a series of seventeen photographs taken from the International Space Station during a flyover of Australia. This first photo of the series was shared on Twitter with the caption, "#EarthArt in one pass over the #Australian continent. Picture 1 of 17. #YearInSpace". (Photo via NASA)
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station on Oct. 7, 2015. Sharing with his social media followers, Kelly wrote, "The daily morning dose of #aurora to help wake you up. #GoodMorning from @Space_Station! #YearInSpace"
Though dawn creeps over the horizon of the Chilean Atacama Desert, the Milky Way can be seen arching above the four 8-metre Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory. (Photo via A. Russell/ESO)
Two stars shine through the center of a ring of cascading dust in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The star system is named DI Cha, and while only two stars are apparent, it is actually a quadruple system containing two sets of binary stars.
As this is a relatively young star system it is surrounded by dust. The young stars are molding the dust into a wispy wrap.
The host of this alluring interaction between dust and star is the Chamaeleon I dark cloud — one of three such clouds that comprise a large star-forming region known as the Chamaeleon Complex. DI Cha's juvenility is not remarkable within this region. In fact, the entire system is among not only the youngest but also the closest collections of newly formed stars to be found and so provides an ideal target for studies of star formation. (Photo via ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt, Caption via European Space Agency)
Expedition 45 Commander Scott Kelly took this photograph during a spacewalk on Oct. 28, 2015. Sharing the image on social media, Kelly wrote, "#SpaceWalkSelfie Back on the grid! Great first spacewalk yesterday. Now on to the next one next week. #YearInSpace" (Photo via NASA)
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): "#EarthArt in one pass over the #Australian continent. Picture 2 of 17. #YearInSpace"
This image shows the location of VFTS 352 — the hottest and most massive double star system to date where the two components are in contact and sharing material. The two stars in this extreme system lie about 160 000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This intriguing system could be heading for a dramatic end, either merging to form a single giant star or forming a binary black hole.
This view of the Tarantula star-forming region includes visible-light images from the Wide Field Imager at the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla and infrared images from the 4.1-metre infrared VISTA telescope at Paranal.
(Photo via ESO/M.-R. Cioni/VISTA Magellanic Cloud survey, Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit)
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto's big moon Charon just before closest approach on July 14, 2015. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the spacecraft’s Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC); the colors are processed to best highlight the variation of surface properties across Charon. Charon’s color palette is not as diverse as Pluto’s; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region, informally named Mordor Macula. Charon is 754 miles (1,214 kilometers) across; this image resolves details as small as 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers). (Photo via NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): Hurricane #Patricia approaches #Mexico. It's massive. Be careful! #YearInSpace
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): "#EarthArt Across the Greatest Desert- #Sahara #YearInSpace"
This composite of enhanced color images of Pluto (lower right) and Charon (upper left), was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it passed through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015. This image highlights the striking differences between Pluto and Charon. The color and brightness of both Pluto and Charon have been processed identically to allow direct comparison of their surface properties, and to highlight the similarity between Charon’s polar red terrain and Pluto’s equatorial red terrain. Pluto and Charon are shown with approximately correct relative sizes, but their true separation is not to scale. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the spacecraft’s Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). (Photo via NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
This image released by NASA on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2015, shows the blue color of Pluto's haze layer in this picture taken by the New Horizons spacecraft's Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturnâs moon Titan. This image was generated by software that combines information from blue, red and near-infrared images to replicate the color a human eye would perceive as closely as possible. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI via AP
The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter often takes images of Martian sand dunes to study the mobile soils. These images provide information about erosion and movement of surface material, about wind and weather patterns, even about the soil grains and grain sizes. However, looking past the dunes, these images also reveal the nature of the substrate beneath. (Photo via NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)
Ribbons of dust festoon the galaxy NGC 613 in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 613 is classified as a barred spiral galaxy for the bar-shaped band of stars and dust crossing its intensely glowing center.
As with nearly all spiral galaxies, a monstrous black hole resides at the heart of NGC 613. Its mass is estimated at about 10 times that of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole and it is consuming stars, gas and dust. As this matter descends into the black hole's maw it radiates away energy and spews out radio waves.
(Photo via ESA/Hubble & NASA and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast); Acknowledgement: Robert Gendler, Caption via European Space Agency)
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): "Day 200. Sometimes a little light makes all the difference. #GoodNight from @Space_Station #YearInSpace"
This artist’s impression shows VFTS 352 — the hottest and most massive double star system to date where the two components are in contact and sharing material. The two stars in this extreme system lie about 160 000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This intriguing system could be heading for a dramatic end, either with the formation of a single giant star or as a future binary black hole. (Photo via ESO/L. Calçada)
This image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a location on Mars associated with the best-selling novel and Hollywood movie, "The Martian."
This area is in the Acidalia Planitia region. In the novel and the movie, it is the landing site of a crewed mission named Ares 3. For the story's central character, Acidalia Planitia is within driving distance from where NASA's Mars Pathfinder, with its Sojourner rover, landed in 1997. (Photo via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): ".@POTUS Nothing like getting a call from you Mr. President. Oleg caught #WashingtonDC lit like stars #AstronomyNight"
The dark area across the top of the sun in this image is a coronal hole, a region on the sun where the magnetic field is open to interplanetary space, sending coronal material speeding out in what is called a high-speed solar wind stream. The high-speed solar wind originating from this coronal hole, imaged here on Oct. 10, 2015, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, created a geomagnetic storm near Earth that resulted in several nights of auroras. This image was taken in wavelengths of 193 Angstroms, which is invisible to our eyes and is typically colorized in bronze. (Photo via NASA/SDO)
This self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the "Big Sky" site, where its drill collected the mission's fifth taste of Mount Sharp. (Photo via NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
This high-resolution image captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). Pluto’s surface shows a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. The bright expanse is the western lobe of the “heart,” informally known as Tombaugh Regio. The lobe, informally called Sputnik Planum, has been found to be rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane ices.
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): "#EarthArt A single pass over the #Australian continent. Picture 15 of 17. #YearInSpace"
A pair of jets protrude outwards in near-perfect symmetry in this image of Herbig-Haro object (HH) 212, taken by ESO’s already decommissioned Infrared Spectrometer And Array Camera (ISAAC).
The object lies in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter) in a dense molecular star-forming region, not far from the famousHorsehead Nebula. In regions like this, clouds of dust and gas collapse under the force of gravity, spinning faster and faster and becoming hotter and hotter until a young star ignites at the cloud’s centre. Any leftover material swirling around the newborn protostar comes together to form an accretion disc that will, under the right circumstances, eventually evolve to form the base material for the creation of planets, asteroids and comets. (Photo via ESO/M. McCaughrean)
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): "Early morning shot of Hurricane #Joaquin from @space_station before reaching #Bahamas. Hope all is safe. #YearInSpace"
Just before the 15th anniversary of continuous human presence on the International Space Station on Nov. 2, 2015, U.S. astronaut and commander of the current Expedition 45 crew, Scott Kelly, is breaking spaceflight records. On Friday, Oct. 16, Kelly begins his 383rd day living in space, surpassing U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke’s record. (Photo via NASA)
This scarp at the edge of the North Polar layered deposits of Mars is the site of the most frequent frost avalanches seen by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. At this season, northern spring, frost avalanches are common and HiRISE monitors the scarp to learn more about the timing and frequency of the avalanches, and their relationship to the evolution of frost on the flat ground above and below the scarp.
This picture managed to capture a small avalanche in progress, right in the color strip. The small white cloud in front of the brick red cliff is likely carbon dioxide frost dislodged from the layers above, caught in the act of cascading down the cliff. It is larger than it looks, more than 20 meters across, and (based on previous examples) it will likely kick up clouds of dust when it hits the ground. (Photo via NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona, Caption via Paul Geissler)
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): "#EarthArt A single pass over the #Australian continent. Picture 10 of 17. #YearInSpace"
The full moon appears to perch atop the peaks of the Chilean Andes, in this spectacular shot from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. (Photo via ESO/B. Rojas-Ayala)
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): "Day 216. Seeing our world in a new light tonight. #GoodNight from @space_station! #YearInSpace"
A view from the "Kimberley" formation on Mars taken by NASA's Curiosity rover. The strata in the foreground dip towards the base of Mount Sharp, indicating flow of water toward a basin that existed before the larger bulk of the mountain formed.
The colors are adjusted so that rocks look approximately as they would if they were on Earth, to help geologists interpret the rocks. This "white balancing" to adjust for the lighting on Mars overly compensates for the absence of blue on Mars, making the sky appear light blue and sometimes giving dark, black rocks a blue cast. (Photo via NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
This planetary nebula is called PK 329-02.2 and is located in the constellation of Norma in the southern sky. It is also sometimes referred to as Menzel 2, or Mz 2, named after the astronomer Donald Menzel who discovered the nebula in 1922. (Photo via ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Serge Meunier)
Observations by ESO’s planet-finding instrument, SPHERE, a high-contrast adaptive optics system installed on the third Unit Telescope of ESO’s Very Large Telescope, have revealed the edge-on disc of gas and dust present around the binary star system HD 106906AB.
HD 106906AB is a double star located in the constellation of Crux (The Southern Cross). Astronomers had long suspected that this 13 million-year-old stellar duo was encircled by a debris disc, due to the system’s youth and characteristic radiation. However, this disc had remained unseen — until now! The system’s spectacular debris disc can be seen towards the lower left area of this image. It is surrounding both stars, hence its name of circumbinary disc. The stars themselves are hidden behind a mask which prevent their glare from blinding the instrument.
These stars and the disc are also accompanied by an exoplanet, visible in the upper right, named HD 106906 b, which orbits around the binary star and its disc at a distance greater than any other exoplanet discovered to date — 650 times the average Earth–Sun distance, or nearly 97 billion kilometres. HD 106906 b has a mammoth mass of up to 11 times that of Jupiter, and a scorching surface temperature of 1500 degrees Celsius
(Photo via ESO, A. M. Lagrange (Université Grenoble Alpes))
Saturn's dynamic F ring contains many different types of features to keep scientists perplexed. In this image we see features ring scientists call "gores," to the right of the bright clump, and a "jet," to the left of the bright spot.
Thanks to the ring's interaction with the moons Prometheus and Pandora, and perhaps a host of smaller moonlets hidden in its core, the F ring is a constantly changing structure, with features that form, fade and re-appear on timescales of hours to days. (Photo via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
Antarctic sea ice likely reached its annual maximum extent on Oct. 6, barring a late season surge. This video shows the evolution of the sea ice cover of the Southern Ocean from its minimum yearly extent to its peak extent. (Photo via NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
Damaging heavy rains fell on South Carolina in the southeastern United States at the beginning of October 2015. Much of that water had, by mid-October, flowed into the Atlantic Ocean bringing with it heavy loads of sediment, nutrients, and dissolved organic material. The above VIIRS image shows the runoff as it interacts with ocean currents. (Photo via NASA/Goddard/SuomiNPP/VIIRS via NASA's OceanColor)
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): "Day 203. #GoodNight to the #Himalayas from @space_station! I'm sure I'll see you again. #YearInSpace"
NASA's Cassini spacecraft zoomed by Saturn's icy moon Enceladus on Oct. 14, 2015, capturing this stunning image of the moon's north pole. (Photo via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
The galaxy cluster MS 0735.6+7421 is home to one of the most powerful eruptions ever observed. X-rays detected by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory (blue) show the hot gas that comprises much of the mass of this enormous object. This image is part of a collection of new images released from the Chandra archive to celebrate American Archive Month. (Photo via NASA)
This image shows the galaxy Messier 94, which lies in the small northern constellation of the Hunting Dogs, about 16 million light-years away.
Within the bright ring or starburst ring around Messier 94, new stars are forming at a high rate and many young, bright stars are present within it.
The cause of this peculiarly shaped star-forming region is likely a pressure wave going outwards from the galactic center, compressing the gas and dust in the outer region. The compression of material means the gas starts to collapse into denser clouds. Inside these dense clouds, gravity pulls the gas and dust together until temperature and pressure are high enough for stars to be born. (Caption via European Space Agency, Photo via ESA/NASA)
Expedition 45 Commander Scott Kelly tries on his spacesuit for a fit check inside the U.S. Quest airlock of the International Space Station. Kelly and Flight Engineer Kjell Lindgren will venture outside the station for a pair of spacewalks on Wednesday, Oct. 28 and Friday, Nov. 6. (Photo via NASA)
Enceladus is a world divided. To the north, the terrain is covered in impact craters, much like other icy moons. But to the south, the record of impact cratering is much more sparse, and instead the land is covered in fractures, ropy or hummocky terrain and long, linear features. (Photo via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): "#Houston, looks like great weather down there! Although, I'd be fine with any weather. #GoodMorning! #YearInSpace"
Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly): "#EarthArt In 377 cumulative days in space, I've never seen this before today. #YearInSpace"
Full moon rises over a chapel next to a vineyard near Bergtheim, southern Germany, on October 26, 2015. AFP PHOTO / DPA / KARL-JOSEF HILDENBRAND +++ GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read KARL-JOSEF HILDENBRAND/AFP/Getty Images)
In September, the New Horizons team released a stunning but incomplete image of Pluto’s crescent. Thanks to new processing work by the science team, New Horizons is releasing the entire, breathtaking image of Pluto.
This image was made just 15 minutes after New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, as the spacecraft looked back at Pluto toward the sun. The wide-angle perspective of this view shows the deep haze layers of Pluto's atmosphere extending all the way around Pluto, revealing the silhouetted profiles of rugged plateaus on the night (left) side. The shadow of Pluto cast on its atmospheric hazes can also be seen at the uppermost part of the disk. On the sunlit side of Pluto (right), the smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum is flanked to the west (above, in this orientation) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. Below (east) of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers.
The backlighting highlights more than a dozen high-altitude layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere. (Photo via NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
The month of October brought many exciting new views of space, as NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, prior to his very
, spent two days sharing a series of
taken from the International Space Station during a flyover of Australia.
Images of Pluto's atmospheric haze were beamed down and released by NASA as well, as the New Horizons spacecraft discovered
Also, the last supermoon of the year lit up the sky this month for the
in 2015. A new or full moon that's at its closest to Earth, the supermoon put on an impressive show for stargazers who were able to catch a glimpse of the year's last occurrence.
Click through the gallery above to see the most incredible space photos from the past four weeks, and be sure to check back next month for our November selection of more astonishing cosmic photography.
More from AOL.com:Month in space: Sept. 2015Buzz Aldrin: 'Earth isn't the only world for us anymore'NASA just released 9,200 Apollo mission photos that will change how you see space
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The month of October brought many incredible developments in the study of space, and with it even more astonishing images.
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How To Be A Supermodel
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Imagine: One day, you’re a gangly 14-year-old girl scarfing a Big Mac at McDonald’s. The next, you are the highest-paid model in the world, stalking the runways of New York, Paris and Milan, Italy; yours is the face of everything from Dolce and Gabbana to Victoria’s Secret to Apple computers; you’re dating mega-hunks like actor Leonardo DiCaprio and quarterback Tom Brady. It happened to supermodel Gisele Bundchen.
Yes and no. There were many, many steps in between burger and hunks. And even for the most beautiful, the most outgoing, perfect young woman, the odds are far better at the lottery counter. But still, every year, some women do make it. It isn’t impossible. So how does a pretty teen girl go from nobody to supermodel?
A handful, like Kate Moss, take the express route. She was a 14-year-old in JFK Airport when she was first spied by an agent for London’s Storm Model Management. Others, like Victoria’s Secret angel Adriana Lima and Australian sensation Gemma Ward, accompanied a friend to a modeling contest, only to end up being the discovery.
“It’s the girl who never thought she could who gets discovered. The prettiest girl in school doesn’t always make the best model,” says Ivan Bart, a top agent with IMG Models, which reps Bundchen, Heidi Klum and Kate Moss.
But for most others, the slog up the ladder follows a routine path. Girls send photos into a local or national modeling agency (only a Polaroid is needed) or show up for an open casting call. Agencies generally hold them once a week. Victoria’s Secret’s Alessandra Ambrosio took a modeling class in her hometown of Erechim, Brazil, then urged her mother to move with her to São Paolo, where she was scouted by a local agency. Soon she won a modeling contest sponsored by Elite, one of New York’s biggest agencies.
Modeling conventions, where local agencies can introduce promising models to bigger agents, are another possibility. Model Amy Wesson, Maybelline face Jessica White and former male model Ashton Kutcher were discovered at the International Modeling and Talent Association convention, held twice a year in New York and Los Angeles.
Once a girl is signed with a big agency (in New York, where the biggest are located, this would include IMG, Elite, Next, Women and DNA), she is sent on what is called “go-sees”–castings for photographers, editorials and runway shows.
During Fashion Weeks in New York, Paris and Milan (held in spring and fall), a model can be sent on as many as a dozen go-sees a day for six weeks. It’s this grueling and low-paying internship process that determines whether a model can burst out of the anonymous pack.
Getting cast in an important designer’s show, like that of Marc Jacobs or Prada, can instantly launch a career. Not getting cast at all can mean a one-way ticket back home. Depending on her experience, a model is usually paid $250 to $1,200 an hour for runway work. But a beginner model takes home little or nothing. Everything from cabs to airfare to the agency’s 10% fees (20% if the girl is still signed with a local agency) is deducted from her salary, and many designers don’t pay at all.
“I have no idea how much I make,” says newcomer Edythe Hughes, 17, a teen scouted in a Columbus, Ohio, mall two years ago. (Forbes followed Hughes around for a day. See “A Day In The Life of A Young Model.”) This season, she strutted the runways in New York for Vera Wang, Rebecca Taylor and Jill Stuart.
Hughes is advanced $150 a week for expenses and probably won’t see much more than that. But she doesn’t mind: “Before this, I was working as a librarian, making $8 an hour.” Last season, Hughes worked as an “exclusive” model for Calvin Klein and banked $9,500 for one show (and 15 hours’ prep time). Of that, she thinks she netted about $5,000, but she isn’t sure. With luck, Hughes will get a better grip on her finances this year. She’s hired an accountant.
Runway may not pay, but it can pay off. It’s here that a model can be scouted by the star makers of the industry–editors, photographers, cosmetic company executives. It’s here that front-row fixture Anna Wintour might take notice of a girl and put her in the pages of Vogue. The new face of Estée Lauder, Hilary Rhoda, was spotted at a New York fashion show by Balenciaga’s lead designer, Nicolas Guesquiere, who then brought the unknown catwalker to the attention of his friend Aerin Lauder, Estée’s granddaughter and the company’s creative director.
Rhoda, a 20-year-old from Chevy Chase, Md., joins a long line of faces who became ubiquitous on billboards, commercials and beauty counters the world over, thanks to the cosmetic giant. Karen Graham was its first contract model, and she lasted 15 years (this before retouching). In the 1990s, the brand made Paulina Porizkova one of the most famous faces on the planet. It also launched the modeling career of Elizabeth Hurley, who, at the time, was known primarily for being Hugh Grant’s girlfriend. Next came supermodels Carolyn Murphy and Liya Kibede (who is being phased out this year).
Contract models for larger cosmetic brands are generally paid $300,000 to $2 million a year, depending on exclusivity and the amount of days the model is expected to work. Murphy, who models for other brands, earned an estimated $5 million last year. Rhoda raked in $2 million.
Estée Lauder’s models are chosen by its top four executives, including Aerin Lauder. Candidates are brought in for a photo shoot and put in mock-up ads. They interview with the executives, who want to make sure the girls are well spoken and can handle store and media appearances. Group President John Dempsey claims that, when it comes to making a final decision, there’s never dissension in the ranks: “Everybody’s eyes go to one girl.”
Rhoda, says Dempsey, was chosen for her healthy all-American look and her maturity: “She has the presence of someone five or six years older.” The models are required to be a “positive role model” and have a “morals clause” in their contracts. No wonder the brand tends to eschew Hollywood starlets. The face of its new fragrance, Private Collection, is 37-year-old Aerin Lauder herself.
At Victoria’s Secret, which has made superstars out of dozens of models, including Gisele Bundchen, Adriana Lima, Heidi Klum, Tyra Banks and Alessandra Ambrosio, executives don’t have to rely on personal preference to pick their next faces. They can measure a girl’s potential in cold hard cash.
“Some girls sell incredibly well,” says Chief Marketing Officer Edward Razek. Computers track each photograph in every catalog. Not surprisingly, girls who move merchandise end up moving up the corporate ladder to supermodeldom.
As for girls like Edythe Hughes, only time will tell if she’ll end up a supermodel or back in Ohio. Keeping her hopes high, but not too high, she says her goal would be to work with a photographer like Steven Meisel or become a popular editorial model like Gemma Ward. “There’s not too many Tyra’s anymore,” she says.
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The odds are better in the lottery, but it isn't totally impossible. Here's how it happens.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/16/nyregion/roosevelts-and-the-quirks-of-destiny.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160624205239id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2005/03/16/nyregion/roosevelts-and-the-quirks-of-destiny.html?
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Roosevelts and the Quirks of Destiny
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The Roosevelt biographers James MacGregor Burns and Doris Kearns Goodwin say that Franklin and Eleanor's example gave, in Mr. Burns's words, "a kind of permission to descendants to move as widely as they wished." Eleanor's example particularly encouraged many of her five children and 29 grandchildren to find friends in a variety of circles and to do battle with social inequities.To be sure, many descendants of this New York State clan have taken more predictable paths, studying at prep schools like Groton, working for white-shoe law firms, running charities, marrying upper-crust names like Havemeyer and du Pont and taking roles in their Episcopal churches. But others have veered from those paths, sometimes sharply.
Hall Delano Roosevelt, 47, a grandson, remembered three decades ago when his father, James, told him they ought to tour "the campus."
But the younger Mr. Roosevelt told his father he did not want to go to Harvard like his older brothers, Michael and James.
"At that point my hair was down to my shoulders and the only thing important in my life was surfing," he said.
He enrolled in Orange Coast College, a junior college in California minutes from the beach. For a time he broiled steaks at a restaurant, but he eventually found his way into jobs in energy conservation and is now an environmental consultant. He even picked up his dynastic calling by running as a city councilman in Long Beach, Calif., serving from 1996 to 2000. "One thing I learned on my father's knee is when you get to a point in life where you've worked hard and gotten yours, we have an absolute obligation to help somebody else get theirs," he said.
Franklin and Eleanor were fifth cousins and the descendants of Claes Martenszen van Rosenvelt, who landed in New Amsterdam during the 1640's. Both Roosevelts grew up with the blueblood trappings of a Henry James and Edith Wharton novel, though Eleanor was orphaned at 10. But Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, who has an uncanny likeness to her grandmother Eleanor and is a board member of the March of Dimes, said that Franklin and Eleanor both spurned lives of genteel ease for public service.
Eleanor took uncommon roles for a woman of her time, serving as a United Nations delegate and newspaper columnist, surrounding herself with labor leaders and officials of black and Jewish groups.
John R. Boettiger, a 65-year-old grandson of the couple, said that the five children of the president struggled under the weight of their parents' achievements. They each married more than once and never quite felt comfortable in the skin of their careers. Three sons struggled with alcohol.
"How do you compete with the commander in chief of the Western world or the first lady of the Western world?" asked Mr. Boettiger, a retired professor of psychology.
But most members of subsequent generations simply gave up on emulation. "There is this legacy to live up to, but I'm never going to win a world war," said Lulie Haddad, the 38-year-old daughter of Kate Roosevelt Whitney, a granddaughter of Franklin and Eleanor, who married a tabloid newspaper reporter.
Files at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y., suggest that the Roosevelt maverick streak was evident early on. After an expected first marriage to a reputable stockbroker, Anna Roosevelt, the eldest daughter, took a loop out of the film "It Happened One Night" and married Clarence John Boettiger, a working-class reporter for The Chicago Tribune whom she met as he was covering Roosevelt's first presidential campaign.
The second of Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.'s five wives, Felicia Schiff Warburg Sarnoff, came from the "Our Crowd" German Jewish gentry. And the youngest son, John, seconded the nomination of Dwight Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican convention. One Roosevelt granddaughter, Sara Delano Roosevelt, caused a mild sensation in 1953 when she married a piano prodigy who was the son of an immigrant barber.
But he said that one generation later, he and the other grandchildren were able to take departures in their careers or marriages because his grandmother "had a sense of explicitly recognizing the promise of her grandchildren, whatever their leanings."
Mr. Boettiger married Janet Adler, the daughter of a small-town Jewish family from Indiana. It is their son Joshua who is studying at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pa.
Among Jews, Mr. Boettiger is usually asked how he can rationalize why Franklin Roosevelt did not rescue more Jews from the Nazis, and did not bomb the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz.
"On the one hand this was the president most beloved by the Jews ever -- who did more for the poorer Jewish community than had anyone -- a friend of the Jews," he said. "And people are trying to square that with the fact that he didn't do as much as could have saving Jews from the Nazi machine. Somehow we have to hold both thoughts."
Whatever their doubts, the descendants seem unanimous in their pride in Franklin and Eleanor. Frank Roosevelt, the professor of Marxism, led the effort to build a monument to his grandmother in Riverside Park. But they are also proud that the way Franklin and Eleanor lived their lives made it easier to shape their own.
When he attends the next family reunion, perhaps as an ordained rabbi, Mr. Boettiger said, "I'll take my place among the other funky Roosevelts who have taken alternate paths."
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Surviving descendants of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt have branched out to work in varying and diverse fields not associated with their famous relatives or politics; photos (M)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/books/the-real-hillary.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160624214433id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2003/06/29/books/the-real-hillary.html?src=pm&pagewanted=2
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The Real Hillary
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20160624214433
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The revelations are so calculated and calibrated they might have been vetted by the pollster Dick Morris. She leaves out almost all mention of her husband's history of messing about (which, as David Maraniss writes in his biography of Bill Clinton, she worried about even before they were married, sending her father and brother to Arkansas to check up on him), so that her scene of being stunned over Monica plays more convincingly. By ignoring the trail of infidelities, she can ignore the marital dynamic caused by those infidelities, which ended up having seismic consequences for the Democrats in the 1994 election and the country.
Bill Clinton handed over huge chunks of responsibility to his wife on policy and appointments not only because he thought she was brilliant, but because he felt he owed her -- for giving up the career she could have had to become a ''lady lawyer'' in a place she didn't want to go (Arkansas), for taking
a name she didn't want to take (Clinton), for assuming a title she didn't like (first lady) and for putting up with humiliation she didn't deserve (Gennifer, Paula et al.).
When I asked one of Hillary's top health care deputies once why Bill hadn't insisted that his wife scale down the size of her health care plan, and warned her that the tactics of speed and secrecy might backfire, he replied the president felt too beholden to intervene: ''She has a 100-pound fishing wire around'' a delicate part of her husband's anatomy. In his book, the former presidential aide David Gergen said that he believed that President Clinton did not step in on health care because he did not dare to challenge Hillary after news reports that Arkansas state troopers fetched women for him.
What we cannot know from this book (since events are given other ''interpretations'' in other White House books) is whether Hillary was a gulping-for-air victim of her husband's affairs -- miserable, she is happy to include herself in the company of history's A-list victims, Elie Wiesel, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela -- or an unflinching partner in combating the damage of such escapades, even the efforts by Clinton strategists to smear the women as ''cash-for-trash'' bimbos or delusional erotomaniacs.
When the Monica story broke, the president told Sidney Blumenthal That Woman was nicknamed ''the Stalker.'' Hillary told Sidney, as he later testified, that ''she was distressed that the president was being attacked, in her view, for political motives, for his ministry of a troubled person.'' Hillary's good friend, Charlie Rangel, told reporters that Monica had ''serious emotional problems'' and was ''fantasizing.''
If Hillary participated in the vivisection of young women she knew Bill had been involved with, it doesn't add luster to her portfolio, lavishly documented throughout this book, as someone who protects women and the vulnerable in society. It would mean she cares about women unless they get in the way of the Clintons' mission to help humanity, in which case they're expendable.
Hillary chafed at what she calls ''derivative'' power. During her husband's first presidential campaign, the uneasy realization hit her, when she got some stationery delivered with the ''Rodham'' dropped out of her name: ''Now I was solely 'the wife of,' an odd experience for me.'' She sent the stationery back, stat.
She acts willfully naïve about her outsize influence over the president, as though she were just another West Wing official on the domestic side. She dismisses her role in the destruction of the veteran travel office staff members as an example of people trying too hard to please her after an offhand comment, like the time she said she liked Diet Dr Pepper and was deluged with it for years. ''I said to Chief of Staff Mack McLarty that if there were such problems'' with the travel office finances, ''I hoped he would 'look into it.' ''
I had dinner with her once during the 1992 campaign, in a revolving restaurant in Kentucky. She had a sly sense of humor, which she has never been able to incorporate into her public persona. In the book, she writes that she inherited her great laugh -- ''the same big rolling guffaw that can . . . send cats running from the room'' -- from her gruff, right-wing and loving dad, Hugh Rodham, who owned a drapery fabric business in Illinois. Her remarkable mother, deserted as a child, instilled in her the chutzpah that would allow her to triumph over feral assaults from the right, including a trifecta of attack books by blond conservative pundettes.
At our dinner, sipping white wine, Hillary talked about a job she had one summer sliming fish in a makeshift salmon factory in Valdez, Alaska. When she complained that some of the fish looked bad, the manager fired her. As she writes: ''Of all the jobs I've had, sliming fish was pretty good preparation for life in Washington.''
In her book, she drolly describes technicians setting up an interview at the White House with Barbara Walters; they ''bathed the room in a golden light so gentle and flattering that even the powdered-wig portrait of Benjamin Franklin above the fireplace seemed to glow with youth.''
At her best, she seems like Sarah Brown, the mission doll in ''Guys and Dolls,'' taken with a charming rake and trying to save the world, but fun if you'd get her out for a night in Cuba. (She tells a hilarious story about the State Department warning her to hide from Castro, who wanted to meet her, at Nelson Mandela's inauguration. ''I'd suddenly spot Castro moving toward me, and I'd hightail it to a far corner of the room,'' she writes.)
But Senator Clinton is also maddening. She will say she learned lessons from bad decisions but then often circle back to insist she was right all along. She resents the St. Hillary image (even as she talks often about the importance of prayer and Scripture in her life), but she can't confess to having a materialistic side that sometimes led her into inexplicably tacky choices, from her dealings with a dubious savings and loan operator in Arkansas to her $100,000 windfall in commodities to her attempts to avoid Senate ethics rules by negotiating an $8 million book advance and her agreeing at the end of her first ladydom to accept largesse from wealthy benefactors so she could buy china and silver for her post-White House life in an Embassy Row home.
''Hillary, though a Methodist,'' a top Clinton aide once explained to me, ''thinks of herself like an Episcopal bishop who deserves to live at the level of her wealthy parishioners, in return for devoting her life to God and good works.''
Drawings (Robert Grossman; Christoph Niemann)
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LIVING HISTORY By Hillary Rodham Clinton. Illustrated. 562 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $28.
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http://time.com/2848310/orange-is-the-new-black-men/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160624224525id_/http://time.com:80/2848310/orange-is-the-new-black-men/
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Why Orange Is the New Black Is a Show Every Man Needs to Watch
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Orange Is the New Black reaffirmed its position as Netflix’s best — and most watched — original series with the premiere of its second season. But I fear that the predominantly female cast will scare men away from the show. It shouldn’t. As critics have said over and over again, this isn’t a show about women for women: it’s a show about people. It humanizes a population society often pretends doesn’t exist and addresses universal problems like racism, money, addiction, love, betrayal and sexuality.
If that doesn’t convince you, here are nine reasons dudes should tune in to the second season, which some critics are calling even better than the first.
1. Realistic, funny dialogue about female sexuality happens naturally.
In one episode, a male character brags about giving his girlfriend a vaginal orgasm: “Do you know how hard that is?” he asks. Characters on OINTB skip the innuendos in favor of real discussions about straight and gay sex: What’s the best way to please a woman? What’s it like to have sex while you’re still lactating?
And for straight men with questions about the female anatomy, there’s an explainer from Sophia, a transgender woman who paid for and designed her own vagina. She draws a chart to teach other inmates what their female-only equipment actually looks like. It’s useful to say the least: a guard, overhearing the conversation, applies his knowledge later with his own girlfriend.
2. It’s not all about “white girl problems.”
Creator Jenji Kohan has often talked about how the series’ nominal main character—skinny, rich, white Brooklynite Piper—is a “trojan horse,” used to smuggle the audience into the prison so she can tell the real story: the complicated lives of a diverse set of characters. OITNB probably has the most diverse set of characters on television right now in terms of race, sexuality and socioeconomic status.
Those who were turned off by Piper’s rude awakening as she adjusted to prison last season will be happy to see her character take a backseat to different types of stories. We learn how one character fell into a life of drug dealing after leaving her group home, how confronting homophobia shaped another’s life and the sad tale behind another’s romantic delusions.
And Piper has gotten perspective too: while her friends on the outside wait hours in line for a “bagnut”—a combo bagel-donut—Piper spends her time scouring the prison floors for a cockroach capable of carrying a cigarette to another cell. And a new character who whines about sustainable food reminds Piper (and the audience) of just how spoiled our main character used to be.
3. This is no Sex in the City fashion show.
The characters wear orange or tan jumpsuits the whole time, so there’s no talk of fashion and the only conversations about makeup involve complex plans about how to smuggle in contraband like lipstick.
4. It has all the violence, bank robberies and drugs you would want from a men’s prison show.
Want to see people murdered over drug deals? Inmates beating one another with socks filled with locks? Bank heists? Embezzlement? It’s all here, but with a woman’s touch: some prisoners brilliantly smuggle cigarettes to each other inside tampons because they know the male guards will never look there.
5. Women can be just as terrible as men.
See above: it’s the women who are doing the beat-downs and drug dealing in this show: some with good reason and some because they’re just greedy, heartless people.
Some characters are even “terrible” in more mundane ways. Two of the prisoners engage in what we traditionally would think of as frat boy antics when they start a competition to see who can sleep with the most women in the prison—more points are awarded for bedding aloof targets. One character even tries to pimp out another prisoner in exchange for a blanket.
6. Plotlines about realistic LGBT characters are explored, not exploited.
This is less a reason men need to watch the show than it is a reason everyone needs to watch the show.
A number of popular series have plots in which a straight woman experiments with kissing or having sex with another woman (The O.C., Friends) or the woman’s sexuality is up for debate (The Good Wife, Glee), but these issues wind up seeming like plot devices and there are rarely any confirmed, out-of-the-closet lesbians. Though Piper’s sexuality remains fluid, lots of other characters on the show are actual lesbians. Others are confused (the whole “gay for the stay” concept is explored). Last year even featured an episode devoted to a transgender prisoner named Sophia (Laverne Cox), flashing back to her struggles with her family as she transitioned. In short, the audience gets to see a whole range of sexuality.
7. The portrayals of men are complex and fair.
Though popular culture asks women to identify with men in movies and TV all the time (because there are no women or at least no relatable women), rarely are men put in a position where they have to identify with a woman onscreen. I understand the jump can be tough. So who can a male viewer align himself with?
I’ll admit last season all the men, save one, kind of sucked. They were sexist or vindictive or powerless or just plain rape-y. But this season we get a little more insight into these men’s motivations, their backgrounds, their problems. Even a universally reviled guard gets a little sympathy thrown his way this season after being framed for a crime last season.
8. It passes the Bechdel Test without hitting you over the head with it.
It may seem obvious that a show about a female prison is going to pass the Bechdel Test—a simple quiz that asks if two female characters talk to each other about something other than a man. And while this test should not be the arbiter of whether something is good or not, you’d be surprised how few female-centric TV shows and movies actually accomplish this very basic feat (looking at you, The Other Woman).
But Orange Is the New Black doesn’t take time to bask in its overt feminism. It’s too busy telling interesting stories to pause and remind you that women are doing things you don’t usually see women do on TV.
9. This is how female friendships actually work.
Even complex shows starring women will often have you believe that female relationships are built discussions about who slept with whose husband. And while one OINTB storyline follows an affair this season (I won’t say who), the triviality of the side plot highlights how stupid this traditional drama over a man’s heart is when we could be watching dramas about real problems like poverty and race politics. The most compelling plots on the show follow the friendships of the women in prison as they come together and fall apart. They are full of real human emotion and pain and vengeance.
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9 reasons men shouldn't be scared away by the prison show's predominantly female cast
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/la-fi-costco-visa-20150302-story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160625014657id_/http://www.chicagotribune.com:80/business/la-fi-costco-visa-20150302-story.html
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Costco names Citi, Visa as new credit card partners after AmEx deal ends
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20160625014657
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Citigroup Inc. will become the exclusive issuer of Costco's credit cards and Visa Inc. will replace American Express as the credit-card network for Costco’s stores starting in 2016, the retailer announced Monday.
UPDATE: Costco picks Visa and Citigroup as new credit card partners
AmEx has been the only credit card accepted at Costco for the last 15 years. The deal had been a boon for both companies, analysts said, but they ended their partnership last month.
The Costco partnership represented 8%, or $80 billion, of AmEx's billed business and about 20%, or about $14 billion, of its interest-bearing credit portfolio, Richard Shane of JP Morgan Chase & Co told The Times last month.
Under the new agreement, transactions will be processed by Visa, and Citi will become the exclusive issuer of co-branded credit cards on April 1, 2016.
The membership-only business otherwise accepts only cash or debit cards.
The deal is subject to the purchase of Costco's existing co-branded credit card portfolio by Citi, Costco said in a statement.
The retailer expects the existing portfolio to be sold, spokesman Bob Nelson said. When that happens, existing Costco members will have their new cards sent to them.
“The details of that will come out down the road,” he said.
The new cards will provide rewards to Costco members, serve as membership cards and would be accepted at merchants worldwide that accept Visa credit cards.
Costco will accept other Visa cards under the new agreement.
The current AmEx-Costco deal provides members with 3% cash back at gas stations, 2% cash back at U.S. restaurants and some travel purchases, and 1% cash back on other purchases including Costco purchases.
Staff writers Dean Starkman and E. Scott Reckard contributed to this report.
To combat fraud, Visa wants to track your smartphone
Personal Finance Q&A: Wrong address leads to credit card default
Column: What happens when credit reporting firms think you're dead?
Ask Laz: If you get hacked, are you safer with a credit card or debit card?
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Citigroup Inc. will become the exclusive issuer of Costco's credit cards and Visa Inc. will replace American Express as the credit-card network for Costco’s stores starting in 2016, the retailer announced Monday.
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